Effects of meteorological factors on human leptospirosis in Colombia
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Effects of meteorological factors on human leptospirosis in Colombia J. D. Gutierrez 1 Received: 26 November 2019 / Revised: 29 August 2020 / Accepted: 27 September 2020 # ISB 2020
Abstract Leptospirosis is a disease usually acquired by humans through water contaminated with the urine of rodents that comes into direct contact with the cutaneous lesions, eyes, or mucous membranes. The disease has an important environmental component associated with climatic conditions and natural disasters, such as floods. We analyzed the relationship between rainfall and temperature and the incidence of leptospirosis in the top 30 municipalities with the highest numbers of cases of the disease in the period of 2007 to 2016. It was an ecological study of the time series of cases of leptospirosis, rainfall, and temperature with lags of 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 weeks. A multilevel negative binomial regression model was implemented to evaluate the relationship between leptospirosis and both meteorological factors. In the 30 evaluated municipalities during the study period, a total of 5136 cases of leptospirosis were reported. According to the implemented statistical model, there was a positive association between the incidence of leptospirosis and rainfall with a lag of 1 week and a negative association with temperature with a lag of 4 weeks. Our results show the importance of short-term lags in rainfall and temperature for the occurrence of new cases of leptospirosis in Colombia. Keywords Incidence . Multilevel models . Rainfall . Remote sensors . Temperature . Time series
Introduction Leptospirosis is a disease caused by pathogenic bacteria in the genus Leptospira that affects both humans and animals (Costa et al. 2015). Exposure to water contaminated with urine from infected animals, especially rodent species, is the most common route of infection in humans. The infection is contracted through skin lesions and the mucosa of the nose, mouth, and eyes (World Health Organization-WHO 2018a). The annual incidence of leptospirosis is estimated to be between 0.1 and 1 per 100,000 inhabitants in temperate climates, and the incidence increases to 10 or more per 100,000 in tropical climates. In developing countries, the disease is widely underreported for many reasons, including the Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-020-02028-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * J. D. Gutierrez [email protected] 1
Facultad de IngenierÃa, Grupo Ambiental de Investigación Aplicada-GAIA, Universidad de Santander, Bucaramanga, Colombia
difficulty of distinguishing the clinical signs of the disease from those of other endemic diseases and the lack of appropriate diagnostic laboratory services (World Health Organization-WHO 2018b). In Colombia, it has been mandatory to report the disease to the National Surveillance System of Public Health since 2007. According to Botero (2018), during 2017, 1675 cases of leptospirosis were reported, 988 (5
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