Modelling Spatiotemporal Patterns of Lyme Disease Emergence in Québec.

Patrick Leighton,Camille Guillot,Marc-Antoine Tutt-Guérette,Yan Kestens,Britt Mckinnon,Mengru Yuan,Kate Zinszer,Daniel Szaroz

doi:10.3390/ijerph18189669

Patrick Leighton, Camille Guillot + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189669

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Abstract

Lyme disease is a growing public health problem in Québec. Its emergence over the last decade is caused by environmental and anthropological factors that favour the survival of Ixodes scapularis, the vector of Lyme disease transmission. The objective of this study was to estimate the speed and direction of human Lyme disease emergence in Québec and to identify spatiotemporal risk patterns. A surface trend analysis was conducted to estimate the speed and direction of its emergence based upon the first detected case of Lyme disease in each municipality in Québec since 2004. A cluster analysis was also conducted to identify at-risk regions across space and time. These analyses were reproduced for the date of disease onset and date of notification for each case of Lyme disease. It was estimated that Lyme disease is spreading northward in Québec at a speed varying between 18 and 32 km/year according to the date of notification and the date of disease onset, respectively. A significantly high risk of disease was found in seven clusters identified in the south-west of Québec in the sociosanitary regions of Montérégie and Estrie. The results obtained in this study improve our understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of Lyme disease in Québec, which can be used for proactive, targeted interventions by public and clinical health authorities.

Highlights

Lyme disease (LD) was first identified in Lyme, Connecticut in 1982 in response to several years of unusually high rates of arthritis in both children and adults [1]
Public Health 2021, 18, x in southern Ontario with most current cases occurring in Ontario, Québec, and Nova Sco2 of 15 tia [7]
Data on cases of Lyme disease reported in Québec between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2018 were obtained from the Québec National Institute of Public Health (INSPQ)

Summary

Introduction

Lyme disease (LD) was first identified in Lyme, Connecticut in 1982 in response to several years of unusually high rates of arthritis in both children and adults [1]. Since this time, Lyme disease has been detected in several countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia [2]. 567,000 estimated new cases documented each year, and the US reported approximately. 476,000 new diagnoses in 2018, making LD a significant global health challenge, in North America [3,4,5]. Lyme disease infection can result in significant illness including musculoskeletal, cardiac, and neurological disorders, with the most common sequelae being arthritis [8,9,10]

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