TY - JOUR AU - Cleary, Eimear AU - Boudou, Martin AU - Garvey, Patricia AU - Aiseadha, Coilin AU - McKeown, Paul AU - O’Dwyer, Jean AU - Hynds, Paul T1 - Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Sporadic Shiga Toxin–Producing Escherichia coli Enteritis, Ireland, 2013–2017 T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2021 VL - 27 IS - 9 SP - 2421 SN - 1080-6059 AB - The Republic of Ireland regularly reports the highest annual crude incidence rates of Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC) enteritis in the European Union, ≈10 times the average. We investigated spatiotemporal patterns of STEC enteritis in Ireland using multiple statistical tools. Overall, we georeferenced 2,755 cases of infection during January 2013–December 2017; we found >1 case notified in 2,340 (12.6%) of 18,641 Census Small Areas. We encountered the highest case numbers in children 0–5 years of age (n = 1,101, 39.6%) and associated with serogroups O26 (n = 800, 29%) and O157 (n = 638, 23.2%). Overall, we identified 17 space-time clusters, ranging from 2 (2014) to 5 (2017) clusters of sporadic infection per year; we detected recurrent clustering in 3 distinct geographic regions in the west and mid-west, all of which are primarily rural. Our findings can be used to enable targeted epidemiologic intervention and surveillance. KW - STEC KW - VTEC KW - spatial epidemiology KW - space-time scanning KW - sporadic infection KW - Escherichia coli KW - Shiga toxin KW - Shiga toxin–producing E. coli KW - verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli KW - clustering KW - bacteria KW - enteric infections KW - Ireland KW - food safety DO - 10.3201/eid2709.204021 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/9/20-4021_article ER - End of Reference