Global warming and mosquito-borne disease in USA.

probably a change in living conditions. Even in the poorest US communities, most people now live and work in airconditioned buildings, or are at least protected by insect screens. In addition, the spacing of houses and other buildings has increased because modern urban areas have evolved around the motor vehicle. As a result, population density is much lower than in the past, a major impediment to transmission. Events such as the dengue pandemic that affected the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico in 1995 support this explanation. 74 000 cases were reported from the region (Pan-American Health Organisation, unpublished data), including 4479 from Tamaulipas state, on the Texas border. Of these, 2361 were from Reynosa, a city contiguous with Hidalgo, Texas, but only seven autochthonous cases were reported in the entire state of Texas. Thus, unless living conditions are drastically changed, global warming is unlikely to give rise to major epidemics of tropical mosquito-borne disease in the USA.