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SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF EHRLICHIA CHAFFEENSIS, CAUSATIVE AGENT OF HUMAN MONOCYTOTROPIC EHRLICHIOSIS, ACROSS A MULTI-STATE REGION

Ehrlichia chaffeensis, which causes human monocytotrophic ehrlichiosis (HME), is an important emerging tick-borne pathogen in the southeastern and southcentral United States. The endemnicity probability of E. chaffeensis and, by implication, locations with risk for HME, was predicted by using two modeling methods. This is first large-scale study to use geospatial analyses to estimate the distribution of E. chaffeensis, and it was conducted using data from a prototypic surveillance system that used white-tailed deer as natural sentinels. Analyses included the E. chaffeensis serostatus for 563 counties from 18 states. Both kriging and logistic regression models provided very reliable portrayals of E. chaffeensis occurrence and predicted that E. chaffeensis distribution had good concordance with human case data. The integration of a deer surveillance system with geospatial analyses was useful in developing HME risk maps that will be useful for identifying high-risk areas for public health interventions such as prevention and control efforts.

Received October 5, 2004. Accepted for publication December 14, 2004.

Acknowledgments: We thank Scott Danskin and Sarah Cross for excellent help with building the GIS databases used in this study. We also thank the numerous staff at federal, state, and private wildlife agencies and the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study for collecting samples used in this study.

Financial support: This work was supported primarily by the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (grant 5 R01 AI044235). Additional support was provided by the Federal Aid to Wildlife Restoration Act (50 Stat. 917) and through sponsorship from fish and wildlife agencies in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Authors’ addresses: Michael J. Yabsley, Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. Michael C. Wimberly, D. B. Warnell School of Forest Resources, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. David E. Stallknecht and Susan E. Little, Department of Infectious Diseases, College of Veterinary Medicine, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. William R. Davidson, Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602 and D. B. Warnell School of Forest Resources, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602.

Reprint requests: Michael J. Yabsley, Wildlife Health Building, Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, College of Veterinary Medicine; University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, Telephone: 706-542-1741, Fax: 706-542-5865, E-mail: myabsley{at}vet.uga.edu.

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