Title: Time Series Analysis of Human and Bovine Brucellosis in South Korea from 2005 to 2010 1 2 Authors 3

17 Brucellosis is considered to be one of the most important zoonotic diseases in the world, 18 affecting underdeveloped and developing countries. The primary purpose of brucellosis control 19 is to prevent the spread of disease from animals (typically ruminants) to humans. The main 20 objective of this study was to retrospectively develop an appropriate time series model for cattle21 to-human transmission in South Korea using data from independent national surveillance 22 systems. Monthly case counts for cattle and people as well as national population data were 23 available for 2005-2010. The temporal relationship was evaluated using an Autoregressive 24 Integrated Moving Average with exogenous input (ARIMAX) model [notated as ARIMA (p, d, q) 25 – AR(p)] and a Negative Binomial Regression (NBR) model. 26 Human incidence rate was highly correlated to cattle incidence rate in the same month and the 27 previous month (both r = 0.82). In the final models, ARIMA (0, 1, 1) – AR (0, 1) was determined 28 as the best fit with 191.5% error in the validation phase, whereas the best NBR model including 29 lags (0, 1 months) for the cattle incidence rate yielded a 131.9% error in the validation phase. 30 Error (MAPE) rates were high due to small absolute human case numbers (typically less than 31 10 per month in the validation phase). The NBR model however was able to demonstrate a 32 marked reduction in human case immediately following a hypothetical marked reduction in cattle 33 cases, and may be better for public health decision making. 34