The Influence of Climate and Livestock Reservoirs on Human Cases of Giardiasis

Abstract

Giardia duodenalis is an intestinal parasite which causes diarrhoeal illness in people. Zoonotic subtypes found in livestock may contribute to human disease occurrence through runoff of manure into multi-use surface water. This study investigated temporal associations among selected environmental variables and G. duodenalis occurrence in livestock reservoirs on human giardiasis incidence using data collected in the Waterloo Health Region, Ontario, Canada. The study objectives were to: (1) evaluate associations between human cases and environmental variables between 1 June 2006 and 31 December 2013, and (2) evaluate associations between human cases, environmental variables and livestock reservoirs using a subset of this time series, with both analyses controlling for seasonal and long-term trends. Human disease incidence exhibited a seasonal trend but no annual trend. A Poisson multivariable regression model identified an inverse association with water level lagged by 1 month (IRR = 0.10, 95% CI 0.01, 0.85, P < 0.05). Case crossover analysis found varying associations between lagged variables including livestock reservoirs (1 week), mean air temperature (3 weeks), river water level (1 week) and flow rate (1 week), and precipitation (4 weeks). This study contributes to our understanding of epidemiologic relationships influencing human giardiasis cases in Ontario, Canada.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s10393-018-1385-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Associations Between Eight Earth Observation‐Derived Climate Variables and Enteropathogen Infection: An Independent Participant Data Meta‐Analysis of Surveillance Studies With Broad Spectrum Nucleic Acid Diagnostics

“…Most diarrhea is infectious in etiology, caused by numerous species of fecal‐orally transmitted viral, bacterial and protozoal microorganisms that vary in the extent to which environmental and atmospheric conditions facilitate or constrain their survival and dispersal (Chao et al., 2019 ; J. M. Colston et al., 2019 ; Platts‐Mills et al., 2018 ). This sensitivity to time‐varying hydrometeorological factors, now widely documented both for individual diarrhea‐causing pathogens (Brunn et al., 2018 ; Djennad et al., 2019 ; L.‐P. Wang et al., 2021 ; P. Wang et al., 2018 ) and for all‐cause diarrheal outcomes (Aik et al., 2020 ; Horn et al., 2018 ; Wangdi & Clements, 2017 ), has led to fears that climate change might undermine progress in reducing global childhood diarrheal disease incidence and deaths (K. Levy et al., 2016 ).…”

“…Analyses of time‐series data from particular cities, regions or countries have identified significant associations between individual climatological parameters—such as relative humidity in Singapore (Aik et al., 2020 ), temperature in Bhutan (Wangdi & Clements, 2017 ) and precipitation in Mozambique (Horn et al., 2018 )—and diarrheal outcomes. Others have focused on single pathogen species (Brunn et al., 2018 ; Djennad et al., 2019 ; Hasan et al., 2018 ; Ureña‐Castro et al., 2019 ) or compared multiple species within the same taxon (Park et al., 2018 ; P. Wang et al., 2018 ). However, to draw broad, generalizable conclusions about the impact of weather on enteropathogens, it is necessary to combine data from locations that are representative of different climate zones.…”

Network-wide analysis of the Serosep EntericBio Gastro Panel 2 for the detection of enteric pathogens in Public Health Wales microbiology laboratories

“…Processing procedures used by every testing laboratory within the PHW network are standardised, to prevent inequalities in diagnosis. Any variances in detection rates are more likely to be due to infection outbreaks, foreign travel [49], and other external factors such as the non-uniform health status of urban versus rural areas in Wales [17,48].…”

“…1. To account for seasonal changes in infection rates of enteric pathogens [13][14][15][16][17][18], the time periods used in the comparison were the same. The pre-NAAT data set covered October 2016 to February 2018 (17 months).…”

A scoping review of risk factors and transmission routes associated with human giardiasis outbreaks in high-income settings

“…The search results yielded two studies each for farm animal and companion animal contact transmission routes for giardiasis, affecting 408 people and the elderly at a rate of 5193/10,000 people ( Table 5 ) ( Jagai et al., 2010 ; Wojcik-Fatla et al., 2018 ; Brunn et al., 2019 ; Rehbein et al., 2019 ). Until relatively recently, the lack of robust molecular genotyping for Giardia has hampered work to fully understand zoonotic transmission.…”