Hosein Rafiemanesh
1 
, Yousef Alimohamadi
2,3, Seyed Rasoul Hashemi Aghdam
4, Avaz Safarzadeh
5, Abolghasem Shokri
6, Alireza Zemestani
7* 1 Student Research Committee, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health and Safety, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
2 Noor Research Center for Ophthalmic Epidemiology, Noor Eye Hospital, Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
4 Oskou Comprehensive and Public Health Network, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
5 Student Research Committee, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran
6 Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
7 Road Traffic Injury Research Center, Health Management and Safety Promotion Research Institute, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
Abstract
Background: The epidemiology of human brucellosis has drastically changed in recent years. This study aims to assess trend in brucellosis in the Oskou county, East Azerbaijan, Iran. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on all confirmed brucellosis cases over the period between 2007 and 2016 in Oskuo county. We use crude incidence rate (CIR) per100000 persons and carried out Joinpoint regression analysis to describe brucellosis trend over the study period. Also, we used ARIMA model to predict trend and number of new brucellosis cases for the coming years.
Results: More than 90% (92.5%; 95% CI: 89.9-95.1) of brucellosis cases were in rural areas over the study period. In recorded cases, 60.5% (95% CI: 55.6-65.4) of total cases were men and 39.5% (95% CI: 34.6-44.4) of total cases were women. The mean age of men was 33.85(SD=19.72) years and the mean age of women was 35.88 (SD=17.26) years old. Majority of brucellosis cases occurred in spring. CIRs for the rural and urban areas were 47.62 to132.20 and zero to 18.55, respectively. The CIR for rural area had decreasing trend to 2011 and increasing for 2011-2017.
Conclusion: Based-on time series analysis, the number of new cases in the future years has fixed trend and the most number of incident cases will be occurred between third to fifth months in each years.