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In recent research published in the journal One Health, "Exploring the Impacts of Wildlife Trade on Zoonotic Spillover and Disease Outbreaks: A Multiple-perspective Study," researchers from Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) have discovered that wildlife imports strongly influence the likelihood of zoonotic emerging infectious disease (EID) outbreaks. This marks the first global measurement of how wildlife trade is linked to outbreaks of animal-borne diseases, across countries and over time.

"While previous papers have identified the spatial link between EID occurrences and other factors such as population growth rate, GDP and climatic conditions, wildlife trade volumes remain untested," says Dr. Lingyun Xiao, one of the corresponding authors of the paper from the Academy of Life and Natural Sciences at XJTLU.

The researchers analyzed data from 214 countries over 39 years using two statistical approaches: The first tested whether countries that traded more wildlife in a given year were also more likely to report a zoonotic EID occurrence, and whether they reported more of them. The second focused on extremes, testing whether years of unusually high wildlife trade coincide with unusually severe disease outbreaks. In both cases, the researchers looked at imports and exports separately.

While in theory wildlife trade is expected to be linked mainly to zoonotic pathogens, the study also included nonzoonotic EIDs as a comparison check, testing whether reporting bias or overall trade volume could explain the link.

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