Epidemiology of human brucellosis in Nahavand county, Hamadan Province, western Iran: an 8-year (2010–2017) registry-based analysis
, , , , and | Sep 20, 2020
Article Category: Original article
Published Online: Sep 20, 2020
Page range: 151 - 158
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/abm-2020-0022
Keywords
© 2020 Salman Khazaei et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Background
Brucellosis is an infectious zoonosis, which greatly afflicts human health and animal productivity.
Objectives
To describe the trends and epidemiological characteristics of human brucellosis in Nahavand county, Hamadan Province, western Iran over 8 years (2010–2017).
Methods
In this registry-based longitudinal study, we analyzed all reported cases of human brucellosis, including 1,130 patients from 2010 to 2017. A checklist including demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with reported cases of brucellosis had been used to gather data. We calculated annual percent changes (APCs) and average annual percent changes (AAPCs) using Joinpoint software to determine the trend of brucellosis using a segmented regression model.
Results
Among the patients, 60.9% were male and 87.3% lived in rural areas. The mean age of the patients was 35.9 ± 18.34 years. Compared with male patients, female patients were more affected when they were elderly (15.6% men vs. 24.2% women for those aged ≥55 years) (
Conclusion
The incidence of brucellosis in the western part of Iran is high and remains a challenging health problem. In the present study, age, job, sex, and seasonal changes are important risk factors for human brucellosis.