Spatio-temporal models to determine association between Campylobacter cases and environment

Roy A. Sanderson*, James A. Maas, Alasdair P. Blain, Russell Gorton, Jessica Ward, Sarah J. O'Brien, Paul R. Hunter, Stephen P. Rushton

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    13 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Background: Campylobacteriosis is a major cause of gastroenteritis in the UK, and although 70% of cases are associated with food sources, the remainder are probably associated with wider environmental exposure. Methods: In order to investigate wider environmental transmission, we conducted a spatiotemporal analysis of the association of human cases of Campylobacter in the Tyne catchment with weather, climate, hydrology and land use. A hydrologicalmodel was used to predict surfacewater flow in the Tyne catchment over 5 years. We analysed associations between populationadjusted Campylobacter case rate and environmental factors hypothesized to be important in disease using a two-stage modelling framework. First, we investigated associations between temporal variation in case rate in relation to surface-water flow, temperature, evapotranspiration and rainfall, using linearmixed-effects models. Second, we used the random effects for the firstmodel to quantify how spatial variation in static landscape features of soil and land use impacted on the likely differences between subcatchment associations of case rate with the temporal variables. Results: Population-adjusted Campylobacter case rates were associated with periods of high predicted surface-water flow, and during above average temperatures. Subcatchments with cattle on stagnogley soils, and to a lesser extent sheep plus cattle grazing, had higher Campylobacter case rates. Conclusions: Areas of stagnogley soils with mixed livestock grazing may be more vulnerable to both Campylobacter spread and exposure during periods of high rainfall, with resultant increased risk of human cases of the disease.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article numberdyx217
    Pages (from-to)202-216
    Number of pages15
    JournalInternational Journal of Epidemiology
    Volume47
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2018

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    © The Author 2017; all rights reserved. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association.

    Keywords

    • Campylobacter
    • Hydrology
    • Livestock
    • Rainfall
    • Soils

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