Environmental Determinants of Leptospirosis in Urban Setting: A Systematic Review
Keywords:
Leptospirosis, Environmental, Indicator, Risk Factor, UrbanAbstract
Introduction:
Leptospirosis is among the neglected infectious diseases with high infection rates and mortality. This disease is largely underreported and underdiagnosed, often difficult to extinguish from other diseases with similar presentation such as Dengue. It is high time for the shift in strategy towards prevention and control particularly with its high prevalence in impoverished urban communities. Thus we aim to systematically review existing literature on the environmental indicators contributing to the risk of getting Leptospirosis in urban settings which is paramount for effective prevention and control
Method:
A literature search was conducted in December 2021 using Web of Sciences, PubMed, Ovid, and Scopus online databases. Open-access articles produced between 2011 and 2021 were analysed, emphasizing the environmental indicators for Leptospirosis infection in urban settings.
Result:
Eight articles met the inclusion benchmarks. The majority of the studies in this review were done specifically in urban slum communities while two studies in Columbia and Puerto Rico consist of the overall urban community. Only three studies assessed environmental indicators as a risk for leptospirosis by using a checklist adapted from published and validated guidelines by the Centre of Disease Control. Adaptation was done to assimilate the characteristics of the area of study. Geography Information System (GIS) was used in four studies to measure and map out the related environmental indicators. One study employ known and verified guidelines to measure environmental risk and produce a prediction score for severe leptospirosis and its discriminative capacity by employing c-statistics derived from the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, sensitivity, and false positivity rates.
Conclusion:
Adapting to existing validated and published guidelines in future studies with predictive scoring together with GIS could produce standardized and solid results which then can be replicated in other countries, involving more types of premises other than households such as food premises. Thus, enhanced and focused preventative and control strategies for environmental factors can be undertaken, allowing policymakers to deploy scarce healthcare resources more effectively.
References
AL kattan G, Abdul Rani Bahaman, Siti Khairani Bejo, Zakaria Z, Garba B. Serological and molecular prevalence of Leptospira infection in Rat populations in Kuala Lumpur. Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences. 2017.
Hartskeerl RA, Collares-Pereira M, Ellis WA. Emergence, control and re-emerging leptospirosis: dynamics of infection in the changing world. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2011;17(4):494-501.
Leptospirosis: Fact Sheet. wwwwhoint.
Centers for Disease C, Prevention. LEPTOSPIROSIS Fact Sheet for Clinicians Background. 2018.
Bharti AR, Nally JE, Ricaldi JN, Matthias MA, Diaz MM, Lovett MA, et al. Leptospirosis: a zoonotic disease of global importance. Lancet Infect Dis. 2003;3(12):757-71.
Abela-Ridder B, Sikkema R, Hartskeerl RA. Estimating the burden of human leptospirosis. Int J Antimicrob Agents. 2010;36 Suppl 1:S5-7.
Picardeau M. Diagnosis and epidemiology of leptospirosis. Med Mal Infect. 2013;43(1):1-9.
Hagan JE, Moraga P, Costa F, Capian N, Ribeiro GS, Wunder EA, Jr., et al. Spatiotemporal Determinants of Urban Leptospirosis Transmission: Four-Year Prospective Cohort Study of Slum Residents in Brazil. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2016;10(1):e0004275.
Kyobutungi C, Ziraba AK, Ezeh A, Yé Y. The burden of disease profile of residents of Nairobi's slums: results from a demographic surveillance system. Popul Health Metr. 2008;6:1.
Costa F, Wunder EA, Jr., De Oliveira D, Bisht V, Rodrigues G, Reis MG, et al. Patterns in Leptospira Shedding in Norway Rats (Rattus norvegicus) from Brazilian Slum Communities at High Risk of Disease Transmission. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2015;9(6):e0003819.
Felzemburgh RD, Ribeiro GS, Costa F, Reis RB, Hagan JE, Melendez AX, et al. Prospective study of leptospirosis transmission in an urban slum community: role of poor environment in repeated exposures to the Leptospira agent. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2014;8(5):e2927.
Reis RB, Ribeiro GS, Felzemburgh RD, Santana FS, Mohr S, Melendez AX, et al. Impact of environment and social gradient on Leptospira infection in urban slums. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2008;2(4):e228.
McBride AJ, Athanazio DA, Reis MG, Ko AI. Leptospirosis. Curr Opin Infect Dis. 2005;18(5):376-86.
Ko AI, Goarant C, Picardeau M. Leptospira: the dawn of the molecular genetics era for an emerging zoonotic pathogen. Nature Reviews Microbiology. 2009;7(10):736-47.
Phraisuwan P, Whitney EA, Tharmaphornpilas P, Guharat S, Thongkamsamut S, Aresagig S, et al. Leptospirosis: skin wounds and control strategies, Thailand, 1999. Emerg Infect Dis. 2002;8(12):1455-9.
Costa F, Zeppelini CG, Ribeiro GS, Santos N, Reis RB, Martins RD, et al. Household rat infestation in urban slum populations: Development and validation of a predictive score for leptospirosis. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2021;15(3):e0009154.
Page MJ, McKenzie JE, Bossuyt PM, Boutron I, Hoffmann TC, Mulrow CD, et al. The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. Bmj. 2021;372:n71.
Pollock A, Berge E. How to do a systematic review. Int J Stroke. 2018;13(2):138-56.
Flemming K, Booth A, Garside R, Tunçalp Ö, Noyes J. Qualitative evidence synthesis for complex interventions and guideline development: clarification of the purpose, designs and relevant methods. BMJ Glob Health. 2019;4(Suppl 1):e000882.
Khalil H, Santana R, de Oliveira D, Palma F, Lustosa R, Eyre MT, et al. Poverty, sanitation, and Leptospira transmission pathways in residents from four Brazilian slums. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2021;15(3):e0009256.
Santos NJ, Sousa E, Reis MG, Ko AI, Costa F. Rat infestation associated with environmental deficiencies in an urban slum community with high risk of leptospirosis transmission. Cad Saude Publica. 2017;33(2):e00132115.
Sahimin N, Sharif SA, Mohd Hanapi IR, Nai Chuan S, Lewis JW, Douadi B, et al. Seroprevalence of Anti-Leptospira IgG and IgM Antibodies and Risk Assessment of Leptospirosis among Urban Poor Communities in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2019;101(6):1265-71.
Briskin EA, Casanovas-Massana A, Ryff KR, Morales-Estrada S, Hamond C, Perez-Rodriguez NM, et al. Seroprevalence, Risk Factors, and Rodent Reservoirs of Leptospirosis in an Urban Community of Puerto Rico, 2015. J Infect Dis. 2019;220(9):1489-97.
Escandón-Vargas K, Osorio L, Astudillo-Hernández M. Seroprevalence and factors associated with Leptospira infection in an urban district of Cali, Colombia. Cad Saude Publica. 2017;33(5):e00039216.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Integrated Pest Management: Conducting Urban Rodent Surveys i. 2006.
Garba B, Bahaman AR, Bejo SK, Zakaria Z, Mutalib AR, Bande F. Major epidemiological factors associated with leptospirosis in Malaysia. Acta Trop. 2018;178:242-7.
Benacer D, Thong KL, Verasahib KB, Galloway RL, Hartskeerl RA, Lewis JW, et al. Human Leptospirosis in Malaysia: Reviewing the Challenges After 8 Decades (1925-2012). Asia Pac J Public Health. 2016;28(4):290-302.
Pappas G, Papadimitriou P, Siozopoulou V, Christou L, Akritidis N. The globalization of leptospirosis: worldwide incidence trends. Int J Infect Dis. 2008;12(4):351-7.
Sakundarno M, Bertolatti D, Maycock B, Spickett J, Dhaliwal S. Risk factors for leptospirosis infection in humans and implications for public health intervention in Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific region. Asia Pac J Public Health. 2014;26(1):15-32.
Kamath R, Swain S, Pattanshetty S, Nair NS. Studying risk factors associated with human leptospirosis. J Glob Infect Dis. 2014;6(1):3-9.
Rahayu S, Sakundarno Adi M, Dian Saraswati L. Mapping Of Leptospirosis Environmental Risk Factors and Determining the Level of Leptospirosis Vulnerable Zone In Demak District Using Remote Sensing Image. E3S Web Conf. 2018;31:06003.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Nor Rumaizah Mohd Nordin, Mohd Hasni Ja'afar, Anis Afina Yusof, Mohd Firdaus Mohd Radi, Shahrul Azhar Md Hanif, Qistina Mohd Ghazali, Mohd Rohaizat Hassan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
IJPHR applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to articles and other works we publish. If you submit your paper for publication byIJPHR, you agree to have the CC BY license applied to your work. Under this Open Access license, you as the author agree that anyone can reuse your article in whole or part for any purpose, for free, even for commercial purposes. Anyone may copy, distribute, or reuse the content as long as the author and original source are properly cited. This facilitates freedom in re-use and also ensures that IJPHR content can be mined without barriers for the needs of research.
