Temporal and geographic analysis of trichinellosis incidence in Chile with risk assessment

Trichinellosis is a foodborne disease caused by several Trichinella species around the world. In Chile, the domestic cycle was fairly well-studied in previous decades, but has been neglected in recent years. The aims of this study were to analyze, geographically, the incidence of trichinellosis in Chile to assess the relative risk and to analyze the incidence rate fluctuation in the last decades. Using temporal data spanning 1964–2019, as well as geographical data from 2010 to 2019, the time series of cases was analyzed with ARIMA models to explore trends and periodicity. The Dickey-Fuller test was used to study trends, and the Portmanteau test was used to study white noise in the model residuals. The Besag-York-Mollie (BYM) model was used to create Bayesian maps of the level of risk relative to that expected by the overall population. The association of the relative risk with the number of farmed swine was assessed with Spearman’s correlation. The number of annual cases varied between 5 and 220 (mean: 65.13); the annual rate of reported cases varied between 0.03 and 1.9 cases per 10(5) inhabitants (mean: 0.53). The cases of trichinellosis in Chile showed a downward trend that has become more evident since the 1980s. No periodicities were detected via the autocorrelation function. Communes (the smallest geographical administrative subdivision) with high incidence rates and high relative risk were mostly observed in the Araucanía region. The relative risk of the commune was significantly associated with the number of farmed pigs and boar (Sus scrofa Linnaeus, 1758). The results allowed us to state that trichinellosis is not a (re)emerging disease in Chile, but the severe economic poverty rate of the Mapuche Indigenous peoples and the high number of backyard and free-ranging pigs seem to be associated with the high risk of trichinellosis in the Araucanía region. [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13071-021-04783-6.