Study Results from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) Update Understanding of Zoonoses (Using pet insurance claims to predict occurrence of vector-borne and zoonotic disease in humans in the United States): Zoonoses

2025 MAY 14 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health & Medicine Daily -- Investigators publish new report on zoonoses. According to news reporting originating from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Taking a One Health approach to infectious diseases common to both dogs and people, pet insurance claims from 2008 to 2022 in the United States were compared to publicly available CDC-based data on human cases for Lyme disease, giardia, and Valley Fever (coccidioidomycosis).”

Funders for this research include Fetch Insurance Services, LLC.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech): “Despite having very different causative agents and etiologies, the disease trends for these three diseases were very similar between people and dogs both geographically and temporally. We furthermore demonstrated that adding dog data as a predictor variable in addition to the human data improves prediction models for those same diseases when investigating incidence over time. With machine learning prediction tools for the pet insurance to predict changes in disease incidence sooner and give public health officials more time to prepare, pet insurance data could be a helpful tool to predict and detect diseases by estimating even earlier the effects of these common exposure diseases on human health. We also show the spatiotemporal distribution of intestinal worm diagnoses in dogs, and while it could not be directly compared to human data because the corresponding disease in humans (soil-transmitted helminths) has not been well monitored recently.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “However, these data can help inform researchers and public health workers.”

For more information on this research see: Using pet insurance claims to predict occurrence of vector-borne and zoonotic disease in humans in the United States. Scientific Reports, 2025,15(1):1-11. (Scientific Reports - http://www.nature.com/srep/index.html). The publisher for Scientific Reports is Nature Portfolio.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-99229-9.

Our news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Janice O’Brien, Department of Population Health Sciences, Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Virginia Tech. Additional authors for this research include Aliya McCullough, Christian Debes, Audrey Ruple.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)