TY  - JOUR
A1  - Cunze, Sarah
A1  - Glock, Gustav
A1  - Klimpel, Sven
T1  - Spatial and temporal distribution patterns of tick-borne diseases (Tick-borne Encephalitis and Lyme Borreliosis) in Germany
T2  - PeerJ
N2  - Background: In the face of ongoing climate warming, vector-borne diseases are expected to increase in Europe, including tick-borne diseases (TBD). The most abundant tick-borne diseases in Germany are Tick-Borne Encephalitis (TBE) and Lyme Borreliosis (LB), with Ixodes ricinus as the main vector.
Methods: In this study, we display and compare the spatial and temporal patterns of reported cases of human TBE and LB in relation to some associated factors. The comparison may help with the interpretation of observed spatial and temporal patterns.
Results: The spatial patterns of reported TBE cases show a clear and consistent pattern over the years, with many cases in the south and only few and isolated cases in the north of Germany. The identification of spatial patterns of LB disease cases is more difficult due to the different reporting practices in the individual federal states. Temporal patterns strongly fluctuate between years, and are relatively synchronized between both diseases, suggesting common driving factors. Based on our results we found no evidence that weather conditions affect the prevalence of both diseases. Both diseases show a gender bias with LB bing more commonly diagnosed in females, contrary to TBE being more commonly diagnosed in males.
Conclusion: For a further investigation of of the underlying driving factors and their interrelations, longer time series as well as standardised reporting and surveillance system would be required.
KW  - Ixodes ricinus
KW  - Tick-borne diseases
KW  - Vector-host-interaction
KW  - Weather conditions
KW  - Land cover
KW  - Robert Koch Institute
KW  - Castor bean tick
KW  - Climate change
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/75115
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-751159
SN  - 2167-8359
N1  - Data Availability
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
All data used in this study is freely available:
• Data on temperature and precipitation conditions were obtained from the Climate
Data Center (CDC) of Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) (https://opendata.dwd.de), under
the terms of the GeoNutzV 2013 license: https://www.dwd.de/EN/service/copyright/
copyright_node.html.
• NUTS https://gdz.bkg.bund.de/index.php/default/nuts-gebiete-1-250-000-stand-31-
12-nuts250-31-12.html.
• CORINE land cover: https://gdz.bkg.bund.de/index.php/default/corine-land-cover-5-
ha-stand-2012-clc5-2012.html.
Both are licensed under by the Data licence Germany–attribution–version 2.0,
http://www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0.
• GBIF occurrence data:
Apodemus flavicollis: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.p4r693 (01 June 2021),
Capreolus capreolus: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.wp98ts (28 May 2021),
Cervus elaphus: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.72ddmz (28 May 2021),
Ciconia ciconia: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.k6jv69 (28 May 2021),
Soricidae https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.czyyq2 (01 June 2021),
Grus grus: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.j4fe7k (28 May 2021),
Ixodes ricinus: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.yak5vd (23 June 2020),
Myodes glareolus: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.82wsgb (01 June 2021),
Turdus merula: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.t3h8b4 (28 May 2021),
Vulpes vulpes: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.wgtneb (28 May 2021).
N1  - The peer review history for this article is available at https://peerj.com/articles/12422/reviews/
VL  - 9
IS  - art. e12422
SP  - 1
EP  - 20
PB  - PeerJ, Inc.
CY  - London [u.a.]
ER  -