Document Type
Article
Rights
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence
Disciplines
1.5 EARTH AND RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES, Environmental sciences
Abstract
The Republic of Ireland regularly reports the highest annual crude incidence rates of Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC) enteritis in the European Union, ≈10 times the average. We investigated spatiotemporal patterns of STEC enteritis in Ireland using multiple statistical tools. Overall, we georeferenced 2,755 cases of infection during January 2013–December 2017; we found >1 case notified in 2,340 (12.6%) of 18,641 Census Small Areas. We encountered the highest case numbers in children 0–5 years of age (n = 1,101, 39.6%) and associated with serogroups O26 (n = 800, 29%) and O157 (n = 638, 23.2%). Overall, we identified 17 space-time clusters, ranging from 2 (2014) to 5 (2017) clusters of sporadic infection per year; we detected recurrent clustering in 3 distinct geographic regions in the west and mid-west, all of which are primarily rural. Our findings can be used to enable targeted epidemiologic intervention and surveillance.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2709.204021
Recommended Citation
Cleary, E., Boudou, M. & Garvey, P. (2021). Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Sporadic Shiga Toxin–Producing Escherichia coli Enteritis, Ireland, 2013–2017. Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 27, no. 9, p2421-2433. doi:10.3201/eid2709.204021.