Dust storms are thought to be one of the many extreme events exacerbated by climate change (El-ossta, Qahwaji, and Ipson 2013), which may also have a profound impact on human health. The ways in which the human respiratory mycobiome is able to react to changes in airborne mycobiome can be demonstrative of disease risk. Kawasaki disease, an acute febrile illness which is the most common cause of acquired heart disease in children in many developed and developing countries, may be an example disease development upon airborne mycobiome perturbation. Studies have suggested that a causative agent for Kawasaki disease is a fungal pathogen carried by tropospheric winds transporting dust(Frazer 2012). Such atmospheric linkage with Kawasaki disease incidence has been demonstrated in Japan with winds from Central Asia(Rodó et al. 2011), and in Chile with dust from the Atacama Desert in South America (Jorquera et al. 2015). Cases of Kawasaki disease in Costa Rica have been linked to reports of dust from the Saharan Air Layer (SAL), which has peak activity in the late spring, summer, and early fall, but correlation has yet to be fully confirmed.
The aim of this study is to determine if correlation exists between dust storms originating from the SAL and outbreaks in Kawasaki disease in Costa Rica. There are approximately 35-40 cases annually from the Hospital Nacional de Niños, “Dr. Carlos Sáenz Herrera”, in San José, Costa Rica and my collaborators have enrolled 1039 Kawasaki disease patients in total thus far across the 18 participating Latin American countries from 2009-2013, for which we have weekly distribution of cases(Li-Chan et al. 2017). I will be evaluating satellite images of the Atlantic Ocean around the Caribbean and the Caribbean Sea from Meteosat High Rate SEVIRI Level 1.5 Image Data, GOES, and MODIS-AQUA using a dust index (Li et al. 2007; Kerstin Schepanski et al. 2007; Alzubaidi, Mohammed, and Nasser 2013) during both lulls in Kawasaki disease cases as well as immediately prior to peaks in outbreaks of cases to determine an association between 2009 and 2013 during which we have case data. The long term goal of this project will be to evaluate the impact climate change has thus far had on Kawasaki disease incidence in Latin America as well as forecasting future burden of cases as climate continues to change and dust storms become more frequent and/or severe.