Editor's Summary

4 August 2005

Cholera: rain check

A new study provides the first quantitative data to support the long-standing hypothesis that rainfall influences cholera patterns. There is evidence for a role of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the literature, but no analysis had properly taken into account the nonlinear dynamics of disease. The new study shows that rainfall and the ENSO do increase cholera transmission, but that the effect is much smaller in populations where susceptibility levels are low due to the buildup of 'herd immunity' following previous outbreaks.

Letter: Refractory periods and climate forcing in cholera dynamics

Katia Koelle, Xavier Rodó, Mercedes Pascual, Md. Yunus and Golam Mostafa

doi:10.1038/nature03820

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (352K) | Supplementary information