Citation

Zheng L, Iti Gatti CM, Gamarro EG, Suzuki A, Teah HY. Toxicon 2020; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Waseda Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku, 169-8555, Tokyo, Japan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.toxicon.2020.05.001

PMID

32387348

Abstract

Ciguatera poisoning (CP), arising from ciguatoxins produced by toxic dinoflagellate Gambierdiscus, is one of the most common food-borne diseases in the South Pacific. Climate change as well as its related events have been hypothesized to a higher abundance and wider presence of toxic dinoflagellates, hence a higher risk of the disease. Yet existing studies assessing the relationship between climate factors and CP are limited or based on old data. In this study, we used prewhitened crosscorrelation analysis and auto-regressive integrated moving-average (ARIMA) modeling to develop predictive models of monthly CP incidence in Cook Islands and French Polynesia, two ciguatera-endemic regions in the South Pacific, utilizing the latest epidemiological data.

RESULTS reveal the significant time-lagged associations between the monthly CP incidence rate and several indicators relating to sea surface temperature (SST). In particular, SST anomaly is proven to be a strong positive predictor of an increased ciguatera incidence for both countries. If these time-lags can be supported by more investigations, it will allow health authorities to take appropriate actions, to limit or avoid an epidemic risk, especially on high-risk climate scenarios.

Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Language: en