spatial analyses of the relation between rodent’s active burrows and incidence of zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis in golestan province, northeastern of iran

abstract background: zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (zcl) is one of the most important vector-borne diseases in iran. wild rodents play as a reservoir. the main aim of this study was to determine spatial analyses of the relationship between rodent’s active burrows and incidence of zcl in golestan province, north east of iran . methods : the cross-sectional study was conducted in 59 rural districts in golestan province. spatial distribution of rodent’s active burrows, human cases of zcl and incidence of disease were collected, using geographical infor­mation systems (gis). the relationship of them were analyzed by sperman test, spss software version no.13. results : the most number of rodents’ active burrows, human positive cases (100 persons) and high incidence of disease (35/1000) were observed in korand rural district of gonbad-e kavoos county. there was significant corre­lation between the number of rodents active burrows with incidence rate of disease (0.470, p< 0.001) as well as the number of cases in each districts (0.465, p< 0.001), there is high correlation between higher incidence rate and hu­man positive cases in districts with number of rodents’ active burrows.  conclusion: vicinity of wild rodents’ burrows to villages plays an important role in transmission of zcl to humans.