Climate change is bringing certain skin diseases and other illnesses to regions where they were rarely seen before, according to a recent research review.
Dermatologists should keep these changing patterns of skin diseases in mind when making diagnoses, say the authors, who analyzed specific disease shifts in North America.
As the planet warms, many bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites can survive in areas where they haven’t been found before, the review team writes.
In the U.S., for example, the incidence of the tick-borne Lyme disease increased from an estimated 10,000 cases in 1995 to 30,000 in 2013, and the area where it occurs keeps expanding from New England north into Canada as the ticks find their preferred habitat expanding.
