Journal
EPIDEMIOLOGY AND INFECTION
Volume 145, Issue 10, Pages 2020-2029Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/S0950268817000826
Keywords
Companion animals; electronic health records; Great Britain; one health; surveillance; ticks
Funding
- National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections at University of Liverpool
- Public Health England (PHE)
- Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM)
- HPRU in Environmental Change and Health
- PHE
- University of Exeter
- Met Office
- British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA)
- Animal Welfare Foundation (AWF)
- BBSRC [BB/N019547/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/N019547/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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Ticks represent a large global reservoir of zoonotic disease. Current surveillance systems can be time and labour intensive. We propose that the passive surveillance of companion animal electronic health records (EHRs) could provide a novel methodology for describing temporal and spatial tick activity. A total of 16 58 857 EHRs were collected over a 2-year period (31 March 2014 and 29 May 2016) from companion animals attending a large sentinel network of 192 veterinary clinics across Great Britain (the Small Animal Veterinary Surveillance Network - SAVSNET). In total, 2180 EHRs were identified where a tick was recorded on an animal. The relative risk of dogs presenting with a tick compared with cats was 0.73 (95% confidence intervals 0.67-0.80). The highest number of tick records were in the south central regions of England. The presence of ticks showed marked seasonality with summer peaks, and a secondary smaller peak in autumn for cats; ticks were still being found throughout most of Great Britain during the winter. This suggests that passive surveillance of companion animal EHRs can describe tick activity temporally and spatially in a large cohort of veterinary clinics across Great Britain. These results and methodology could help inform veterinary and public health messages as well as increase awareness of ticks and tick-borne diseases in the general population.
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