Prevalência e distribuição espacial da leishmaniose visceral canina em localidades do distrito do Tirirical no município de São Luís, Maranhão

Abstract

In the end of 90’s decade it was observed an augment of the number of cases, geographic expansion and urbanization of visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil. The climate changes, deforestation, migration of people to urban areas, poor sanitation conditions and discontinuity of control measures are incriminated as responsible factor by the endemicity of this zoonosis. Canine is considered as main epidemiological reservoir of human visceral leishmaniasis in domestic environment, normally the canine cases precede human cases. The district of Tirirical was chosen due to higher number of human and canine cases during the last twenty years. The aim of this work was to determine the prevalence and spatial distribution in urban and rural zone of this district in order to verify if there is relation among socioeconomic and environmental conditions with El Niño occurrence. Blood samples were collected from 270 canines from six localities, which were submitted to PCR technique. Besides, the georeferencing data, a questionnaire was applied to identify the risk factor. The results showed that using the molecular technique the prevalence of canine visceral leishmaniasis was 37.04%, although no statistical difference had been observed, the animals from rural area presented a higher prevalence (42.22%). The univariate analysis did not reveal any association with the questions answered by the dog owner’s as risk factors for leishmaniasis. Despite that, we believe that precarious conditions of sanitation, nearness of municipal sanitary embankment, untidy urban area expansion probably have been contribute to maintenance of the higher prevalence of this district. It was also observed that the indirect effect of the El Niño phenomena has influence in the prevalence of this canine disease once that during the occurrence of the El Niño phenomena increased the flux of migration to São Luís Municipality.