Abstract
Leptospirosis is a globally emerging zoonotic disease, associated with various climatic, biotic and abiotic factors. Mapping and quantifying geographical variations in the occurrence of leptospirosis and the surrounding environment offer innovative methods to study disease transmission and to identify associations between the disease and the environment. This study aims to investigate geographic variations in leptospirosis incidence in the Netherlands and to identify associations with environmental factors driving the emergence of the disease. Individual case data derived over the period 1995–2012 in the Netherlands were geocoded and aggregated by municipality. Environmental covariate data were extracted for each municipality and stored in a spatial database. Spatial clusters were identified using kernel density estimations and quantified using local autocorrelation statistics. Associations between the incidence of leptospirosis and the local environment were determined using Simultaneous Autoregressive Models (SAR) explicitly modelling spatial dependence of the model residuals. Leptospirosis incidence rates were found to be spatially clustered, showing a marked spatial pattern. Fitting a spatial autoregressive model significantly improved model fit and revealed significant association between leptospirosis and the coverage of arable land, built up area, grassland and sabulous clay soils. The incidence of leptospirosis in the Netherlands could effectively be modelled using a combination of soil and land-use variables accounting for spatial dependence of incidence rates per municipality. The resulting spatially explicit risk predictions provide an important source of information which will benefit clinical awareness on potential leptospirosis infections in endemic areas.
Highlights
Leptospirosis is a globally emerging disease with numerous outbreaks being reported worldwide over the past decades [1,2]
Our finding that leptospirosis transmission was higher in areas with high coverage of sabulous clay soils agrees with the results reported by Lau et al (2012) [24], who conclude that leptospirosis seroprevalence was higher in populations inhabiting areas with loamy clay soils
The results of this study show that the emergence of Leptospirosis infections in the Netherlands is closely linked to the environment and can be effectively modelled using a combination of soil properties, land-use variables and spatial processes
Summary
This study aims to investigate geographic variations in leptospirosis incidence in the Netherlands and to identify associations with environmental factors driving the emergence of the disease. This study aims to describe and explain geographic variations in endemic leptospirosis morbidity in the Netherlands. As the main objective of this study was to investigate spatial patterns in Leptospirosis risk, quantified by using the period incidences, we limited the analysis to investigate spatial trends
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