Search

Aims: Japanese encephalitis (JE) is endemic in India. Although pigs are considered important hosts and sentinels for JE outbreaks in people, limited information is available on JE virus (JEV) surveillance in pigs. Methods and Results: We investigated the spatio‐temporal distribution of JEV seroprevalence and its association with climate variables in 4451 samples from pigs in 10 districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, India, over 10 years from 2013 to 2022. The mean seroprevalence of IgG (2013–2022) and IgM (2017–2022) was 14% (95% CI 12.8–15.2) and 10.98% (95% CI 9.8–12.2), respectively. Throughout the region, higher seroprevalence from 2013 to 2017 was observed and was highly variable with no predictable spatio‐temporal pattern between districts. Seroprevalence of up to 60.8% in Sant Kabir Nagar in 2016 and 69.5% in Gorakhpur district in 2017 for IgG and IgM was observed, respectively. IgG seroprevalence did not increase with age. Monthly time‐series decomposition of IgG and IgM seroprevalence demonstrated annual cyclicity (3–4 peaks) with seasonality (higher, broader peaks in the summer and monsoon periods). However, most variance was due to the overall trend and the random components of the time series. Autoregressive time‐series modelling of pigs sampled from Gorakhpur was insufficiently predictive for forecasting; however, an inverse association between humidity (but not rainfall or temperature) was observed. Conclusions: Detection patterns confirm seasonal epidemic periods within year‐round endemicity in pigs in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Lack of increasing age‐associated seroprevalence indicates that JEV might not be immunizing in pigs which needs further investigation because models that inform public health interventions for JEV could be inaccurate if assuming long‐term immunity in pigs. Although pigs are considered sentinels for human outbreaks, sufficient timeliness using sero‐surveillance in pigs to inform public health interventions to prevent JEV in people will require more nuanced modelling than seroprevalence and broad climate variables alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the present study, a total of 768 blood samples (664 cattle and 104 buffalo) were collected to determine the prevalence of bovine anaplasmosis in western parts of Uttar Pradesh, India. The conventional gold standard microscopic examination of Giemsa stained blood smears revealed 61.58% prevalence of bovine anplasmosis. Incidence of bovine anaplasmosis among the districts differed significantly (P<0.05). The prevalence of Anaplasma infection was highest in Baghpat district (69.97%), followed by Hapur (58.57%), Meerut (51.38%), Shamli (45.07%) and Muzaffarnagar (40.98%). Overall prevalence in female animals (74.48%) were significantly higher (P<0.05) than male counterparts (32.34%). There was no significant difference in the prevalence of Anaplasma infection with respect to age of the animals. A multivariate logistic regression model was built with three risk factors included. Hosmer-Lemeshow test indicates a good fit of the model to the data (P=0.2397) and the area under the ROC curve (AUC) is 0.697 (95%CI: 0.663-0.729). The present study concluded the endemic status of bovine anaplasmosis, an important tick borne disease of dairy animals in Uttar Pradesh, India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]