Journal
OPEN FORUM INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Volume 2, Issue 4, Pages -Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/ofid/ofv143
Keywords
Lyme disease; epidemiology; GIS; North Carolina; Virginia
Categories
Funding
- National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health [KL2 TR001115]
- Ken and Sherrilyn Fisher Center for Environmental Infectious Diseases
- National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health [K24 AI093969]
- Boston Children's Hospital Pilot research grant
- Thomas F. and Kate Miller Jeffress Memorial Trust
- InterAmerican Institute for Global Change Research [CRN 3036]
- Cerexa
- Pfizer
- Advanced Liquid Logic
- MedImmune
- Cubist
- Merck
- Astellas
- Affinium
- Theravance
- Debiopharm
- Durata
- NovaDigm
- Novartis
- Medicines Company
- Biosynexus
- Inimex
- Directorate For Geosciences
- ICER [1128040] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Background. The majority of Lyme disease cases in the United States are acquired on the east coast between northern Virginia and New England. In recent years the geographic extent of Lyme disease has been expanding, raising the prospect of Lyme disease becoming endemic in the southeast. Methods. We collected confirmed and probable cases of Lyme disease from 2000 through 2014 from the Virginia Department of Health and North Carolina Department of Public Health and entered them in a geographic information system. We performed spatial and spatiotemporal cluster analyses to characterize Lyme disease expansion. Results. There was a marked increase in Lyme disease cases in Virginia, particularly from 2007 onwards. Northern Virginia experienced intensification and geographic expansion of Lyme disease cases. The most notable area of expansion was to the southwest along the Appalachian Mountains with development of a new disease cluster in the southern Virginia mountain region. Conclusions. The geographic distribution of Lyme disease cases significantly expanded in Virginia between 2000 and 2014, particularly southward in the Virginia mountain ranges. If these trends continue, North Carolina can expect autochthonous Lyme disease transmission in its mountain region in the coming years.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available