Tick-borne encephalitis incidence forecasts for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland

Rubel, Franz; Brugger, Katharina

doi:10.1016/j.ttbdis.2020.101437

Cited by 21 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…GLM3 is also applicable to the neighboring countries such as Germany or Switzerland using the same predictors, since the Scandinavian index is representative for all of Central Europe and also the beech fructification is largescale synchronized. This has be examined in a follow-up study that was carried out during the review process of the paper presented here [64]. The verification with independent TBE cases from 2019 has demonstrated the good performance of the forecasts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) cases are not random: explaining trend, low- and high-frequency oscillations based on the Austrian TBE time series

et al. 2020

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Background: Why human tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) cases differ from year to year, in some years more 100%, has not been clarified, yet. The cause of the increasing or decreasing trends is also controversial. Austria is the only country in Europe where a 40-year TBE time series and an official vaccine coverage time series are available to investigate these open questions. Methods: A series of generalized linear models (GLMs) has been developed to identify demographic and environmental factors associated with the trend and the oscillations of the TBE time series. Both the observed and the predicted TBE time series were subjected to spectral analysis. The resulting power spectra indicate which predictors are responsible for the trend, the high-frequency and the low-frequency oscillations, and with which explained variance they contribute to the TBE oscillations. Results: The increasing trend can be associated with the demography of the increasing human population. The responsible GLM explains 12% of the variance of the TBE time series. The low-frequency oscillations (10 years) are associated with the decadal changes of the large-scale climate in Central Europe. These are well described by the so-called Scandinavian index. This 10-year oscillation cycle is reinforced by the socioeconomic predictor net migration. Considering the net migration and the Scandinavian index increases the explained variance of the GLM to 44%. The high-frequency oscillations (2-3 years) are associated with fluctuations of the natural TBE transmission cycle between small mammals and ticks, which are driven by beech fructification. Considering also fructification 2 years prior explains 64% of the variance of the TBE time series. Additionally, annual sunshine duration as predictor for the human outdoor activity increases the explained variance to 70%. Conclusions: The GLMs presented here provide the basis for annual TBE forecasts, which were mainly determined by beech fructification. A total of 3 of the 5 years with full fructification, resulting in high TBE case numbers 2 years later, occurred after 2010. The effects of climate change are therefore not visible through a direct correlation of the TBE cases with rising temperatures, but indirectly via the increased frequency of mast seeding.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) cases are not random: explaining trend, low- and high-frequency oscillations based on the Austrian TBE time series

et al. 2020

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“…Another reason is the vaccination coverage which varies widely between various regions in Europe [ 43 ]. For example, Austria population has a vaccination coverage of more than 80% (fraction of the population which received at least one TBE vaccination, i.e., ≥1 vaccine dose) since the end of the nineties and this has led to a significant decline in the annual number of human TBE cases [ 44 , 45 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tick-Borne Encephalitis Virus and Its European Distribution in Ticks and Endothermic Mammals

et al. 2020

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Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is the most common viral tick-borne disease in Europe causing thousands of human infections every year. Available risk maps in Europe are solely based on human incidences, but often underestimate areas with TBE virus circulation as shown by several autochthonous cases detected outside known risk areas. A dataset of more than 1300 georeferenced TBE virus detections in ticks and mammals except for humans was compiled and used to estimate the probability of TBE virus presence in Europe. For this, a random forests model was implemented using temperature- and precipitation-dependent bioclimatic variables of the WorldClim dataset, altitude, as well as land cover of the ESA GlobCover dataset. The highest probabilities of TBE virus presence were identified in Central Europe, in the south of the Nordic countries, and in the Baltic countries. The model performance was evaluated by an out-of-bag error (OOB) of 0.174 and a high area under the curve value (AUC) of 0.905. The TBE virus presence maps may subsequently be used to estimate the risk of TBE virus infections in humans and can support decision-makers to identify TBE risk areas and to encourage people to take appropriate actions against tick bites and TBE virus infections.

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“…They use two demographic parameters, the vaccination coverage, a climate index, and a beach fructification index as predictors. Details concerning the TBE models and its predictors were described by Rubel and Brugger (2020), who extended the models to forecast Austrian, German and Swiss TBE incidences for 2019 and 2020. For the first operational application, the forecasts of national TBE incidences for 2020 and 2021 and the verification of the forecasts for 2019, all TBE incidence series and predictors have been updated with new data provided by official sources in spring 2019.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the first operational application, the forecasts of national TBE incidences for 2020 and 2021 and the verification of the forecasts for 2019, all TBE incidence series and predictors have been updated with new data provided by official sources in spring 2019. The availability of all data is also described in detail by Rubel and Brugger (2020). An exception is the beech fructification index after Konnert et al (2016).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Particularly, years with full fructification of beech (mast seeding) are responsible for several high peaks in the TBE time series. This was demonstrated by the recently developed TBE models for Austria, Germany and Switzerland, which were used to forecast the national TBE cases for 2019 and 2020 (Rubel and Brugger, 2020). These TBE models are now used in an operational forecast scheme including verification with independent data.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Operational TBE incidence forecasts for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland 2019–2021

Rubel

Brugger

2020

Preprint

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In spring 2019, forecasts of the incidence of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) for the next two years, i.e. 2019 and 2020, were made for the first time. For this purpose, negative binomial regression models with 4-5 predictors were fitted to the time series of annual human TBE incidences from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The most important predictor for TBE incidences is the fructification index of the European beech (Fagus sylvatica) 2 years prior as a proxi for the intensity of the TBE virus transmission cycle. These forecasts were repeated in spring 2020 after the updated predictors and the confirmed TBE cases for 2019 became available. Forecasting TBE incidences for 2020 and 2021 results in 156±19 and 131±23 TBE cases for Austria, 663±95 and 543±112 TBE cases for Germany as well as 472±56 and 350±62 TBE cases for Switzerland. The newly implemented operational TBE forecasts will be verified every year with confirmed TBE cases. An initial verification for 2019 demonstrates the high reliability of the forecasts.

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Tick-borne encephalitis incidence forecasts for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland

Cited by 21 publications

References 18 publications

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) cases are not random: explaining trend, low- and high-frequency oscillations based on the Austrian TBE time series

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) cases are not random: explaining trend, low- and high-frequency oscillations based on the Austrian TBE time series

Tick-Borne Encephalitis Virus and Its European Distribution in Ticks and Endothermic Mammals

Operational TBE incidence forecasts for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland 2019–2021

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