Patterns of animal rabies in the Nizhny Novgorod region of Russia (2012–2022): the analysis of risk factors

IntroductionAnimal rabies is a viral disease that poses a significant threat to domestic and wild animal populations, with devastating consequences for animal health and human life. Understanding and assessing the risk factors associated with the transmission and persistence of the rabies virus in wild and domestic animal populations is crucial for developing effective strategies to control and mitigate cases. Studies of the spatial and temporal distribution of rabies cases in the Nizhny Novgorod region during 2012-2022 provided epidemiological evidence of the circulation of infection between animals in the presence of vaccination. Among the wild animals in the area, red foxes play a major role in the spread of rabies, accounting for 96.4% of all wild animal cases.MethodsWe used spatiotemporal cluster analysis and a negative binomial regression algorithm to study the relationships between animal rabies burden by municipality and a series of environmental and sociodemographic factors.ResultsThe spatiotemporal cluster analysis suggests the concentration of wild animal rabies cases in the areas of high fox population density and insufficient vaccination rates. The regression models showed satisfactory performance in explaining the observed distribution of rabies in different animals (R2 = 0.71, 0.76, and 0.79 in the models for wild, domestic and all animals respectively), with rabies vaccination coverage and fox population density being among the main risk factors.ConclusionWe believe that this study can provide valuable information for a better understanding of the geographical and temporal patterns of rabies distribution in different animal species, and will provide a basis for the development of density-dependent planning of vaccination campaigns.