Abstract
Introduction: Nowadays, Geographic Information System (GIS) is considered as a main part of many public health and epidemiological projects. The purpose of this study was to use GIS in presenting geographic distribution of pulmonary non-tuberculous Mycobacteria (PNTM) disease and identify environmental and socio-economic factors predictive of disease.
Methods: PNTM cases from National Research Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (NRITLD) in three states (Khuzestan, Eastern Azarbayjan, Ghom), which have the highest prevalence of PNTM in country, were manually geocoded with permission of patients. Patients' addresses were considered as locations, in which NTM exists. By Maxent model, other NTM presence locations in area of study were predicted and the relationship identified.Socio-economic factors and their relationship with patients were reflected in maps.
Results: Response curves yield from Maxent approach for each environmental factor, showed that increasing in elevation and annual precipitation cause to decrease in NTM presence probability. Areas with greater temperature seasonality and also greater organic carbon seem to have greater probability of NTM presence. NTM can be found in soils with pH more than 5 and the chance of presence can increase in such environment. Contemplate of socio-economic factors showed that most of PNTM patients were residents of towns, had lower education and income level, and were older than 50 years old.
Conclusion: GIS is a valuable tool in studying and analyzing incidence and prevalence of diseases because of its immense capabilities in gathering and preparing, and also analyzing data.
- © 2014 ERS
