Landscape, Socioeconomic, and Meteorological Risk Factors for Canine Leptospirosis in Urban Sydney (2017–2023): A Spatial and Temporal Study

Abstract

Leptospirosis is a potentially fatal zoonotic disease caused by infection with pathogenic Leptospira spp. We described reported clinical cases of canine leptospirosis in the council areas of the Inner West and the City of Sydney, Australia, from December 2017 to January 2023 and tested the association with urban spatial (landscape and socioeconomic factors, community seroprevalence, and urban heat island effect) and temporal (precipitation and minimum and maximum temperature) factors and the cases using log-transformed Poisson models, spatially stratified population-adjusted conditional logistic models, General Additive Models (GAMs), and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models. The results suggested that canine leptospirosis is now endemic in the study area. A longer distance to the nearest veterinary hospital (RR 0.118, 95% CI −4.205–−0.065, p p p Leptospira—or increased case detection and reporting—in areas adjacent to veterinary hospitals.

Keywords

• bacteria
• <i>Leptospira</i>
• dogs
• spatial
• temporal
• mapping