Seroprevalence of Q fever among high-risk occupations in the Ilam province, the west of Iran

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 14; no. 2; p. e0211781
• Main Authors: Mostafavi, Ehsan, Molaeipoor, Leila, Esmaeili, Saber, Ghasemi, Ahmad, Kamalizad, Maedeh, Yousefi Behzadi, Manijeh, Naserifar, Razi, Rohani, Mehdi, Hashemi Shahraki, Abdolrazagh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 19-02-2019; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Abattoirs; Abortion; Adolescent; Adult; Analysis; Animal bites; Animal Husbandry; Animals; Antibodies; Antibodies, Bacterial - blood; Bacteriology; Beef cattle; Biology and Life Sciences; Bites; Cattle; Contraction; Coxiella burnetii; Disease susceptibility; Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; Epidemiology; Farmers; Female; Fever; Goats; Hazardous occupations; Health risk assessment; Health risks; Humans; Immunoglobulin G; Infections; Infectious diseases; Iran - epidemiology; Laboratories; Livestock; Male; Meat industry; Medical research; Medicine; Medicine and Health Sciences; Middle Aged; Occupational Exposure - adverse effects; Occupational health; Occupations; Park rangers; People and Places; Prevalence studies (Epidemiology); Preventive medicine; Public health; Q fever; Q Fever - blood; Q Fever - epidemiology; Research and Analysis Methods; Risk Factors; Rural areas; Seroepidemiologic Studies; Serology; Sheep; Tularemia; Workers; Zoonoses; Iran
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211781

Q fever is a zoonotic disease of great public health importance in Iran. This disease is presented with high phase I antibody development in chronic and high phase II antibody in the acute form of illness. This study was conducted to evaluate the seroprevalence of Q fever among high-risk occupations in the Ilam province in Western Iran.
In this cross-sectional study, 367 sera samples were collected from five groups comprised of animal husbandry workers, farmers, butchers, slaughterhouse workers, and park rangers. The collected sera were tested for IgG antibodies against Coxiella burnetii using ELISA. The seroprevalence of antibodies against C. burnetii in phase I and II was 24.38% and 26.37%, respectively (i.e., 32.42% overall). Low educational level, living in rural areas, keeping sheep/goats, ages older than 50 years, and a history of arthropod bites positively correlated with increased risk of Q fever infection. Animal husbandry workers (45.13%) were at higher risk of contracting Q fever compared with other occupations in the study (17.11%).
High seroprevalence of C. burnetii among high-risk occupations is a serious challenge in the Ilam province. In addition, the high seroprevalence of endemic Q fever in rural and nomadic areas and a higher concentration of occupations who are directly engaged with livestock demonstrate the critical need for preventive medicine education and training in regards to mitigating risk for disease contraction in susceptible groups.