Why do dozens of diseases wax and wane with the seasons—and will COVID-19?
Scientists are unraveling why each pathogen has its own calendar
| Different diseases have different patterns. Some peak in early or late winter, others in spring, summer, or fall. Some diseases have different seasonal peaks depending on latitude. And many have no seasonal cycle at all. So no one knows whether SARS-CoV-2 will change its behavior come spring. “I would caution over-interpreting that hypothesis,” Nancy Messonnier, the point person for COVID-19 at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a press conference on 12 February. If the seasons do affect SARS-CoV-2, it also could defy that pattern in this first year and keep spreading, because humanity has not had a chance to build immunity to it. |
| Even for well-known seasonal diseases, it’s not clear why they wax and wane during the calendar year. “It’s an absolute swine of a field,” says Andrew Loudon, a chronobiologist at the University of Manchester. Investigating a hypothesis over several seasons can take 2 or 3 years. “Postdocs can only get one experiment done and it can be a career killer,” Loudon says. The field is also plagued by confounding variables. “All kinds of things are seasonal, like Christmas shopping,” says epidemiologist Scott Dowell, who heads vaccine development and surveillance at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and in 2001 wrote a widely cited perspective that inspired Martinez’s current study. And it’s easy to be misled by spurious correlations, Dowell says.</p> |
| <p>Despite the obstacles, researchers are testing a multitude of theories. Many focus on the relationships between the pathogen, the environment, and human behavior. Influenza, for example, might do better in winter because of factors such as humidity, temperature, people being closer together, or changes in diets and vitamin D levels. Martinez is studying another theory, which Dowell’s paper posited but didn’t test: The human immune system may change with the seasons, becoming more resistant or more susceptible to different infections based on how much light our bodies experience. |
