Correlation of TBE incidence with red deer and roe deer abundance in Slovenia

PLoS One. 2013 Jun 11;8(6):e66380. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0066380. Print 2013.

Abstract

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is a virus infection which sometimes causes human disease. The TBE virus is found in ticks and certain vertebrate tick hosts in restricted endemic localities termed TBE foci. The formation of natural foci is a combination of several factors: the vectors, a suitable and numerous enough number of hosts and in a habitat with suitable vegetation and climate. The present study investigated the influence of deer on the incidence of tick-borne encephalitis. We were able to obtain data from deer culls. Using this data, the abundance of deer was estimated and temporal and spatial analysis was performed. The abundance of deer has increased in the past decades, as well as the incidence of tick-borne encephalitis. Temporal analysis confirmed a correlation between red deer abundance and tick-borne encephalitis occurrence. Additionally, spatial analysis established, that in areas with high incidence of tick-borne encephalitis red deer density is higher, compared to areas with no or few human cases of tick-borne encephalitis. However, such correlation could not be confirmed between roe deer density and the incidence of tick-borne encephalitis. This is presumably due to roe deer density being above a certain threshold so that availability of tick reproduction hosts has no apparent effect on ticks' host finding and consequently may not be possible to correlate with incidence of human TBE.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Deer*
  • Encephalitis, Tick-Borne / epidemiology*
  • Humans
  • Incidence
  • Slovenia / epidemiology

Grants and funding

This study was partially funded by EU grant GOCE-2003-010284 EDEN and by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Sport of Slovenia (grant no. P3-0083). No additional external funding was received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.