Environmental risk factors for the incidence of cutaneous leishmaniasis in an endemic area of Iran: A GIS-based approach.

OBJECTIVES

This study was designed to determine the environmental factors associated with cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) in Isfahan Province, using spatial analysis.

METHODS

Data of monthly CL incidence from 2010 to 2013, climate and environmental factors including: temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), altitude and population density across the Isfahan's cities was used to perform spatial analysis by ordinary least square (OLS) regression and geographically weighted regression (GWR).

RESULTS

OLS revealed a significant correlation between CL incidence and five predictors including temperature, population density, wind speed, humidity and NDVI; which explained 28.6% of variation in CL incidence in the province. Considering AICc and adjusted R2, GWR provided a better fit to the data compared with OLS.

CONCLUSION

There was a positive correlation between temperature and population density with CL incidence in both local (city) and global (province) level.