Climatic factors and the occurrence of vesicular stomatitis in New Mexico, United States of America.

Vesicular stomatitis (VS) outbreaks occurred in the southwestern United States of America in 1995, 1997 and 1998. The epidemiology of VS is not understood completely and some of the epidemiologic aspects of this disease are currently under investigation. In this study, daily maximum temperature, daily minimum temperature, daily mean temperature, daily mean relative humidity and daily total precipitation were collected at the Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research site in central New Mexico. Discriminant analysis was used to identify the climatic variables best able to classify in which months VS would occur. The study found that the amounts of precipitation occurring two, ten, eleven and twelve months prior to the month in which cases were diagnosed, were the climatic variables that best described the occurrence of VS cases. The association of VS cases and precipitation suggests that, like numerous other arthropod-borne diseases, transmission of the disease-causing pathogen is linked to variations in climate.