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Temporal Dynamics and Impact of Climate Factors on the Incidence of Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Central Tunisia

BACKGROUND: Old world Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (ZCL) is a vector-borne human disease caused by Leishmania major, a unicellular eukaryotic parasite transmitted by pool blood-feeding sand flies mainly to wild rodents, such as Psammomys obesus. The human beings who share the rodent and sand fly...

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Autores principales: Toumi, Amine, Chlif, Sadok, Bettaieb, Jihene, Alaya, Nissaf Ben, Boukthir, Aicha, Ahmadi, Zaher E., Salah, Afif Ben
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3341328/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22563513
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0001633
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author Toumi, Amine
Chlif, Sadok
Bettaieb, Jihene
Alaya, Nissaf Ben
Boukthir, Aicha
Ahmadi, Zaher E.
Salah, Afif Ben
author_facet Toumi, Amine
Chlif, Sadok
Bettaieb, Jihene
Alaya, Nissaf Ben
Boukthir, Aicha
Ahmadi, Zaher E.
Salah, Afif Ben
author_sort Toumi, Amine
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Old world Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (ZCL) is a vector-borne human disease caused by Leishmania major, a unicellular eukaryotic parasite transmitted by pool blood-feeding sand flies mainly to wild rodents, such as Psammomys obesus. The human beings who share the rodent and sand fly habitats can be subverted as both sand fly blood resource. ZCL is endemic in the Middle East, Central Asia, Subsaharan and North Africa. Like other vector-borne diseases, the incidence of ZCL displayed by humans varies with environmental and climate factors. However, so far no study has addressed the temporal dynamics or the impact of climate factors on the ZCL risk. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Seasonality during the same epidemiologic year and interval between ZCL epidemics ranging from 4 to 7 years were demonstrated. Models showed that ZCL incidence is raising i) by 1.8% (95% confidence intervals CI:0.0–3.6%) when there is 1 mm increase in the rainfall lagged by 12 to 14 months ii) by 5.0% (95% CI: 0.8–9.4%) when there is a 1% increase in humidity from July to September in the same epidemiologic year. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Higher rainfall is expected to result in increased density of chenopods, a halophytic plant that constitutes the exclusive food of Psammomys obesus. Consequently, following a high density of Psammomys obesus, the pool of Leishmania major transmissible from the rodents to blood-feeding female sand flies could lead to a higher probability of transmission to humans over the next season. These findings provide the evidence that ZCL is highly influenced by climate factors that could affect both Psammomys obesus and the sand fly population densities.
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spelling pubmed-33413282012-05-04 Temporal Dynamics and Impact of Climate Factors on the Incidence of Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Central Tunisia Toumi, Amine Chlif, Sadok Bettaieb, Jihene Alaya, Nissaf Ben Boukthir, Aicha Ahmadi, Zaher E. Salah, Afif Ben PLoS Negl Trop Dis Research Article BACKGROUND: Old world Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (ZCL) is a vector-borne human disease caused by Leishmania major, a unicellular eukaryotic parasite transmitted by pool blood-feeding sand flies mainly to wild rodents, such as Psammomys obesus. The human beings who share the rodent and sand fly habitats can be subverted as both sand fly blood resource. ZCL is endemic in the Middle East, Central Asia, Subsaharan and North Africa. Like other vector-borne diseases, the incidence of ZCL displayed by humans varies with environmental and climate factors. However, so far no study has addressed the temporal dynamics or the impact of climate factors on the ZCL risk. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Seasonality during the same epidemiologic year and interval between ZCL epidemics ranging from 4 to 7 years were demonstrated. Models showed that ZCL incidence is raising i) by 1.8% (95% confidence intervals CI:0.0–3.6%) when there is 1 mm increase in the rainfall lagged by 12 to 14 months ii) by 5.0% (95% CI: 0.8–9.4%) when there is a 1% increase in humidity from July to September in the same epidemiologic year. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Higher rainfall is expected to result in increased density of chenopods, a halophytic plant that constitutes the exclusive food of Psammomys obesus. Consequently, following a high density of Psammomys obesus, the pool of Leishmania major transmissible from the rodents to blood-feeding female sand flies could lead to a higher probability of transmission to humans over the next season. These findings provide the evidence that ZCL is highly influenced by climate factors that could affect both Psammomys obesus and the sand fly population densities. Public Library of Science 2012-05-01 /pmc/articles/PMC3341328/ /pubmed/22563513 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0001633 Text en Toumi et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Toumi, Amine
Chlif, Sadok
Bettaieb, Jihene
Alaya, Nissaf Ben
Boukthir, Aicha
Ahmadi, Zaher E.
Salah, Afif Ben
Temporal Dynamics and Impact of Climate Factors on the Incidence of Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Central Tunisia
title Temporal Dynamics and Impact of Climate Factors on the Incidence of Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Central Tunisia
title_full Temporal Dynamics and Impact of Climate Factors on the Incidence of Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Central Tunisia
title_fullStr Temporal Dynamics and Impact of Climate Factors on the Incidence of Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Central Tunisia
title_full_unstemmed Temporal Dynamics and Impact of Climate Factors on the Incidence of Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Central Tunisia
title_short Temporal Dynamics and Impact of Climate Factors on the Incidence of Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Central Tunisia
title_sort temporal dynamics and impact of climate factors on the incidence of zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis in central tunisia
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3341328/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22563513
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0001633
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