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Rainfall and sentinel chicken seroconversions predict human cases of Murray Valley encephalitis in the north of Western Australia

BACKGROUND: Murray Valley encephalitis virus (MVEV) is a flavivirus that occurs in Australia and New Guinea. While clinical cases are uncommon, MVEV can cause severe encephalitis with high mortality. Sentinel chicken surveillance is used at many sites around Australia to provide an early warning sys...

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Autores principales: Selvey, Linda A, Johansen, Cheryl A, Broom, Annette K, Antão, Catarina, Lindsay, Michael D, Mackenzie, John S, Smith, David W
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4273426/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25490948
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-014-0672-3
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author Selvey, Linda A
Johansen, Cheryl A
Broom, Annette K
Antão, Catarina
Lindsay, Michael D
Mackenzie, John S
Smith, David W
author_facet Selvey, Linda A
Johansen, Cheryl A
Broom, Annette K
Antão, Catarina
Lindsay, Michael D
Mackenzie, John S
Smith, David W
author_sort Selvey, Linda A
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Murray Valley encephalitis virus (MVEV) is a flavivirus that occurs in Australia and New Guinea. While clinical cases are uncommon, MVEV can cause severe encephalitis with high mortality. Sentinel chicken surveillance is used at many sites around Australia to provide an early warning system for risk of human infection in areas that have low population density and geographical remoteness. MVEV in Western Australia occurs in areas of low population density and geographical remoteness, resulting in logistical challenges with surveillance systems and few human cases. While epidemiological data has suggested an association between rainfall and MVEV activity in outbreak years, it has not been quantified, and the association between rainfall and sporadic cases is less clear. In this study we analysed 22 years of sentinel chicken and human case data from Western Australia in order to evaluate the effectiveness of sentinel chicken surveillance for MVEV and assess the association between rainfall and MVEV activity. METHODS: Sentinel chicken seroconversion, human case and rainfall data from the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia from 1990 to 2011 were analysed using negative binomial regression. Sentinel chicken seroconversion and human cases were used as dependent variables in the model. The model was then tested against sentinel chicken and rainfall data from 2012 and 2013. RESULTS: Sentinel chicken seroconversion preceded all human cases except two in March 1993. Rainfall in the prior three months was significantly associated with both sentinel chicken seroconversion and human cases across the regions of interest. Sentinel chicken seroconversion was also predictive of human cases in the models. The model predicted sentinel chicken seroconversion in the Kimberley but not in the Pilbara, where seroconversions early in 2012 were not predicted. The latter may be due to localised MVEV activity in isolated foci at dams, which do not reflect broader virus activity in the region. CONCLUSIONS: We showed that rainfall and sentinel chickens provide a useful early warning of MVEV risk to humans across endemic and epidemic areas, and that a combination of the two indicators improves the ability to assess MVEV risk and inform risk management measures. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12879-014-0672-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-42734262015-01-02 Rainfall and sentinel chicken seroconversions predict human cases of Murray Valley encephalitis in the north of Western Australia Selvey, Linda A Johansen, Cheryl A Broom, Annette K Antão, Catarina Lindsay, Michael D Mackenzie, John S Smith, David W BMC Infect Dis Research Article BACKGROUND: Murray Valley encephalitis virus (MVEV) is a flavivirus that occurs in Australia and New Guinea. While clinical cases are uncommon, MVEV can cause severe encephalitis with high mortality. Sentinel chicken surveillance is used at many sites around Australia to provide an early warning system for risk of human infection in areas that have low population density and geographical remoteness. MVEV in Western Australia occurs in areas of low population density and geographical remoteness, resulting in logistical challenges with surveillance systems and few human cases. While epidemiological data has suggested an association between rainfall and MVEV activity in outbreak years, it has not been quantified, and the association between rainfall and sporadic cases is less clear. In this study we analysed 22 years of sentinel chicken and human case data from Western Australia in order to evaluate the effectiveness of sentinel chicken surveillance for MVEV and assess the association between rainfall and MVEV activity. METHODS: Sentinel chicken seroconversion, human case and rainfall data from the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia from 1990 to 2011 were analysed using negative binomial regression. Sentinel chicken seroconversion and human cases were used as dependent variables in the model. The model was then tested against sentinel chicken and rainfall data from 2012 and 2013. RESULTS: Sentinel chicken seroconversion preceded all human cases except two in March 1993. Rainfall in the prior three months was significantly associated with both sentinel chicken seroconversion and human cases across the regions of interest. Sentinel chicken seroconversion was also predictive of human cases in the models. The model predicted sentinel chicken seroconversion in the Kimberley but not in the Pilbara, where seroconversions early in 2012 were not predicted. The latter may be due to localised MVEV activity in isolated foci at dams, which do not reflect broader virus activity in the region. CONCLUSIONS: We showed that rainfall and sentinel chickens provide a useful early warning of MVEV risk to humans across endemic and epidemic areas, and that a combination of the two indicators improves the ability to assess MVEV risk and inform risk management measures. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12879-014-0672-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2014-12-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4273426/ /pubmed/25490948 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-014-0672-3 Text en © Selvey et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2014 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Selvey, Linda A
Johansen, Cheryl A
Broom, Annette K
Antão, Catarina
Lindsay, Michael D
Mackenzie, John S
Smith, David W
Rainfall and sentinel chicken seroconversions predict human cases of Murray Valley encephalitis in the north of Western Australia
title Rainfall and sentinel chicken seroconversions predict human cases of Murray Valley encephalitis in the north of Western Australia
title_full Rainfall and sentinel chicken seroconversions predict human cases of Murray Valley encephalitis in the north of Western Australia
title_fullStr Rainfall and sentinel chicken seroconversions predict human cases of Murray Valley encephalitis in the north of Western Australia
title_full_unstemmed Rainfall and sentinel chicken seroconversions predict human cases of Murray Valley encephalitis in the north of Western Australia
title_short Rainfall and sentinel chicken seroconversions predict human cases of Murray Valley encephalitis in the north of Western Australia
title_sort rainfall and sentinel chicken seroconversions predict human cases of murray valley encephalitis in the north of western australia
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4273426/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25490948
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-014-0672-3
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