ArticleEnvironmental health and preventive medicine2023
The effect of climate on melioidosis incidence in Townsville, Australia: a dry tropical region.
Article in Environmental health and preventive medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Identification of Environmental Determinants Involved in the Distribution of Burkholderia pseudomallei in Southeast Asia using MaxEnt software.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Pooled it
- Rainfall-Driven Mobilisation of Clinically RelevantPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Seasonal change of Burkholderia pseudomallei in paddy field water strongly correlates with ambient temperature: A study in north-central Vietnam.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Geographical and climatic contributions to melioidosis hotspot formation in Southern Taiwan.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Risk Assessment of Global Animal Melioidosis Under Current and Future Climate Scenarios.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundTownsville is in the dry tropics in Northern Australia and an endemic region for melioidosis. Melioidosis is an infectious disease caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei, a soil dwelling organism. The incidence of melioidosis is associated with high levels of rainfall and has been linked to multiple weather variables in other melioidosis endemic regions such as in Darwin. In contrast to Townsville, Darwin is in the wet-dry tropics in Northern Australia and receives 40% more rainfall. We assessed the relationship between melioidosis incidence and weather conditions in Townsville and compared the patterns to the findings in Darwin and other melioidosis endemic regions.
methodPerforming a time series analysis from 1996 to 2020, we applied a negative binomial regression model to evaluate the link between the incidence of melioidosis in Townsville and various weather variables. Akaike's information criterion was used to assess the most parsimonious model with best predictive performance. Fourier terms and lagged deviance residuals were included to control long term seasonal trends and temporal autocorrelation.
resultsHumidity is the strongest predictor for melioidosis incidence in Townsville. Furthermore, the incidence of melioidosis showed a three-times rise in the Townsville region when >200 mm of rain fell within the fortnight. Prolonged rainfall had more impact than a heavy downpour on the overall melioidosis incident rate. There was no statistically significant increase in incidence with cloud cover in the multivariable model.
conclusionConsistent with other reports, melioidosis incidence can be attributed to humidity and rainfall in Townsville. In contrast to Darwin, there was no strong link between melioidosis cases and cloud cover and nor single large rainfall events.
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