Abstract:
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Vibrio parahaemolyticus (Vp) is the leading cause of seafood-borne gastroenteritis in the US. Within the past decade, disease outbreak has become more frequent in seasonally warm, temperate coastal areas. This new dynamic is likely related to the introduction and establishment of invasive pathogenic strains, increased summertime shellfish production and consumption, and climate-related changes in ecosystem conditions. Long-term environmental monitoring of Vp has been integrated with multiple sources of continuous environmental data to quantify and evaluate these trends as potential drivers of changing Vp dynamics in the temperate Northeast, US. Complex ecological interactions and diurnal, seasonal and annually changing environmental conditions highlight the analytic challenges when developing effective predictive ecological models. To overcome these, a combination of environmental, seasonal and inter-annual time series analyses was used to develop a two-step method that identifies late summer trends in Vp that represent potentially elevated disease risk. This approach provides important progress toward effective forecasting for shellfish-borne Vp disease risk in the Northeast.
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