학술논문

Temporal trends in leptospirosis incidence and association with climatic and environmental factors in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil
Document Type
Academic Journal
Source
Ciência & Saúde Coletiva. March, 2022, Vol. 27 Issue 3, p849, 12 p.
Subject
Brasil
Language
Portuguese
ISSN
1413-8123
Abstract
Introduction Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease that affects humans and animals. It is the most widespread zoonosis, occurring worldwide, except in polar regions, and is more common in tropical and [...]
Leptospirosis is a zoonosis with epidemic potential, especially after heavy rainfall causing river, urban and flash floods. Certain features of Santa Catarina's coastal region influence these processes. Using negative binomial regression, we investigated trends in the incidence of leptospirosis in the six municipalities with the highest epidemic peaks between 2000 and 2015 and the climatic and environmental variables associated with the occurrence of the disease. Incidence was highest in 2008 and 2011, and peaks occurred in the same month or month after disasters. Incidence showed a strong seasonal trend, being higher in summer months. There was a decrease trend in incidence across the six municipalities (3.21% per year). The climatic and environmental factors that showed the strongest associations were number of rainy days, maximum temperature, presence of flash floods, and river flooding. The impact of these variables varied across the municipalities. Significant interactions were found, indicating that the effect of river flooding on incidence is not the same across all municipalities and differences in incidence between municipalities depend on the occurrence of river flooding. Key words Leptospira, Natural disasters, Regression analysis, Linear models