Comparing the Climatic and Landscape Risk Factors for Lyme Disease Cases in the Upper Midwest and Northeast United States

Yuting Dong, Zheng Huang, Yong Zhang, Yingying X.G. Wang and Yang La
Additional contact information
Yuting Dong: College of Life Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, China
Zheng Huang: College of Life Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, China
Yong Zhang: College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
Yingying X.G. Wang: Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, FI-40014 Jyväskylä, Finland
Yang La: Medical College, Tibet University, Lhasa 850000, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 5, 1-10

Abstract: Lyme disease, recognized as one of the most important vector-borne diseases worldwide, has been increasing in incidence and spatial extend in United States. In the Northeast and Upper Midwest, Lyme disease is transmitted by Ixodes scapularis . Currently, many studies have been conducted to identify factors influencing Lyme disease risk in the Northeast, however, relatively few studies focused on the Upper Midwest. In this study, we explored and compared the climatic and landscape factors that shape the spatial patterns of human Lyme cases in these two regions, using the generalized linear mixed models. Our results showed that climatic variables generally had opposite correlations with Lyme disease risk, while landscape factors usually had similar effects in these two regions. High precipitation and low temperature were correlated with high Lyme disease risk in the Upper Midwest, while with low Lyme disease risk in the Northeast. In both regions, size and fragmentation related factors of residential area showed positive correlations with Lyme disease risk. Deciduous forests and evergreen forests had opposite effects on Lyme disease risk, but the effects were consistent between two regions. In general, this study provides new insight into understanding the differences of risk factors of human Lyme disease risk in these two regions.

Keywords: lyme disease; Borrelia burgdorferi; forest fragmentation; climate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/5/1548/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/5/1548/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:5:p:1548-:d:326373

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().