Predicting eastern equine encephalitis spread in North America: An ecological study.

ABSTRACT: Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) is a rare but lethal mosquito-borne zoonotic disease. Recent years have seen incursion into new areas of the USA, and in 2019 the highest number of human cases in decades. Due to the low detection rate of EEE, previous studies were unable to quantify large-scale and recent EEE ecological dynamics. We used Bayesian spatial generalized-linear mixed model to quantify the spatiotemporal dynamics of human EEE incidence in the northeastern USA. In addition, we assessed whether equine EEE incidence has predictive power for human cases, independently from other environmental variables. The predictors of the model were selected based on variable importance. Human incidence increased with temperature seasonality, but decreased with summer temperature, summer, fall,

SUBMITTER: Tang X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8906097 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature