ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Soo-Han Lee1, Won-Chang Lee2 , Soo-Jin Lee2, Yang-Ho Jang2, Hyo-Bi Kim2, Tai-Young Yoon3, So-Hee An3 and Nong-Hoon Choe2
1Barrow Neurological Institute, St. Joseph’s Hospital & Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ, USA.
2College of Veterinary Medicine, Konkuk University, Seoul , Korea.
3College of Medicine, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea.
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2014;8(5):4011-4015
© The Author(s). 2014
Received: 18/06/2013 | Accepted: 20/08/2013 | Published: 31/10/2014
Abstract

This study focuses on a quantitative analysis of the retrospective study of Q fever for epidemiological aspects in Korea during the period from 2006 to 2010. There were a total of 64 cases with an average prevalence rate of 0.26 per 100,000 populations. Significantly more males were infected by Q fever than females (85.9% versus 14.1%) (p<0.01), and a higher incidence of Q fever were observed in those age more than 40 years old (71.9%) (p<0.01), and the occupations most infected were farmers (10.9%). Moreover, the seasonal pattern of outbreaks revealed that most outbreaks occurred in the early spring throughout the beginning of summer, and that significant more outbreaks occurred in the northwestern parts (42.2%) than other areas in the Korean peninsula (p<0.01). Furthermore, the number of cases of Q fever was significantly higher in rural areas (65.6%) than in urban (34.4%), (p<0.01).   In conclusion, Q fever in Korea is a new emerging zoonosis, a serious concerned to the public health. Therefore, the development a health education system for Q fever prevention and improvement of the living environment will aid in reducing from animal reservoirs.

Keywords

Q fever, epidemic aspects, risk factor, Korean

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© The Author(s) 2014. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.