Evaluating the Impact of Environmental Temperature on Global Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 Outbreaks in Domestic Poultry

The emergence and spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A virus subtype H5N1 in Asia, Europe and Africa has had an enormously socioeconomic impact and presents an important threat to human health because of its efficient animal-to-human transmission. Many factors contribute to the occurrence and transmission of HPAI H5N1 virus, but the role of environmental temperature remains poorly understood. Based on an approach of integrating a Bayesian Cox proportional hazards model and a Besag-York-Mollie (BYM) model, we examined the specific impact of environmental temperature on HPAI H5N1 outbreaks in domestic poultry around the globe during the period from 1 December 2003 to 31 December 2009. The results showed that higher environmental temperature was a significant risk factor for earlier occurrence of HPAI H5N1 outbreaks in domestic poultry, especially for a temperature of 25 degrees C. Its impact varied with epidemic waves (EWs), and the magnitude of the impact tended to increase over EWs.