Global distribution maps of the leishmaniases

• Main Authors: David M Pigott, Samir Bhatt, Nick Golding, Kirsten A Duda, Katherine E Battle, Oliver J Brady, Jane P Messina, Yves Balard, Patrick Bastien, Francine Pratlong, John S Brownstein, Clark C Freifeld, Sumiko R Mekaru, Peter W Gething, Dylan B George, Monica F Myers, Richard Reithinger, Simon I Hay
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd 2014-06-01
• Series: eLife
• Subjects: leishmania; cutaneous leishmaniasis; visceral leishmaniasis; niche based modelling; boosted regression tree; species distribution modelling
• Online Access: https://elifesciences.org/articles/02851

The leishmaniases are vector-borne diseases that have a broad global distribution throughout much of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Despite representing a significant public health burden, our understanding of the global distribution of the leishmaniases remains vague, reliant upon expert opinion and limited to poor spatial resolution. A global assessment of the consensus of evidence for leishmaniasis was performed at a sub-national level by aggregating information from a variety of sources. A database of records of cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis occurrence was compiled from published literature, online reports, strain archives, and GenBank accessions. These, with a suite of biologically relevant environmental covariates, were used in a boosted regression tree modelling framework to generate global environmental risk maps for the leishmaniases. These high-resolution evidence-based maps can help direct future surveillance activities, identify areas to target for disease control and inform future burden estimation efforts.