Short-term associations between legionnaires' disease incidence and meteorological variables in Belgium, 2011-2019

Abstract

The number of reported cases with Legionnaires' disease (LD) is increasing in Belgium. Previous studies have investigated the associations between LD incidence and meteorological factors, but the Belgian data remained unexplored. We investigated data collected between 2011 and 2019. Daily exposure data on temperature, relative humidity, precipitation and wind speed was obtained from the Royal Meteorological Institute for 29 weather stations. Case data was collected from the national reference center and through mandatory notification. Daily case and exposure data was aggregated by province. We conducted a time-stratified case-crossover study. The 'at risk' period was defined as 10 to 2 days prior to disease onset. The corresponding days in the other study years were selected as referents. We fitted separate conditional Poisson models for each day in the 'at risk' period and a distributed lag non-linear model (DLNM) which fitted all data in one model. LD incidence showed a yearly peak in August and September. A total of 614 cases were included. Given seasonality, a sequence of precipitation, followed by high relative humidity and low wind speed showed a statistically significant association with the number of cases six to four days later. We discussed the advantages of DLNM in this context.