Spatiotemporal expansion of human brucellosis in Shaanxi Province, Northwestern China and model for risk prediction

Zurong Yang; Miaomiao Pang; Qingyang Zhou; Shuxuan Song; Weifeng Liang; Junjiang Chen; Tianci Guo; Zhongjun Shao; Kun Liu

doi:10.7717/peerj.10113

Spatiotemporal expansion of human brucellosis in Shaanxi Province, Northwestern China and model for risk prediction

PeerJ. 2020 Oct 19:8:e10113. doi: 10.7717/peerj.10113. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Zurong Yang^#^{1

2}, Miaomiao Pang^#³, Qingyang Zhou², Shuxuan Song¹, Weifeng Liang⁴, Junjiang Chen¹, Tianci Guo¹, Zhongjun Shao¹, Kun Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Epidemiology, Ministry of Education Key Lab of Hazard Assessment and Control in Special Operational Environment, School of Public Health, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, People's Republic of China.
² Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Northern Theater Command, Shenyang, People's Republic of China.
³ Shaanxi Provincial Corps Hospital of Chinese People's Armed Police Force, Xi'an, Shaanxi, People's Republic of China.
⁴ Health Commission of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, Shaanxi, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: Human brucellosis imposes a heavy burden on the health and economy of endemic regions. Since 2011, China has reported at least 35,000 human brucellosis cases annually, with more than 90% of these cases reported in the northern. Given the alarmingly high incidence and variation in the geographical distribution of human brucellosis cases, there is an urgent need to decipher the causes of such variation in geographical distribution.

Method: We conducted a retrospective epidemiological study in Shaanxi Province from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2018 to investigate the association between meteorological factors and transmission of human brucellosis according to differences in geographical distribution and seasonal fluctuation in northwestern China for the first time.

Results: Human brucellosis cases were mainly distributed in the Shaanbei upland plateau before 2008 and then slowly extended towards the southern region with significant seasonal fluctuation. The results of quasi-Poisson generalized additive mixed model (GAMM) indicated that air temperature, sunshine duration, rainfall, relative humidity, and evaporation with maximum lag time within 7 months played crucial roles in the transmission of human brucellosis with seasonal fluctuation. Compared with the Shaanbei upland plateau, Guanzhong basin had more obvious fluctuations in the occurrence of human brucellosis due to changes in meteorological factors. Additionally, the established GAMM model showed high accuracy in predicting the occurrence of human brucellosis based on the meteorological factors.

Conclusion: These findings may be used to predict the seasonal fluctuations of human brucellosis and to develop reliable and cost-effective prevention strategies in Shaanxi Province and other areas with similar environmental conditions.

Keywords: Generalized additive mixed model; Human brucellosis; Meteorological factors; Regional differences; Spatiotemporal expansion.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81803289), the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (No. 2020JM-329). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.