Influence of climatic factors on probability of presence and geographical distribution of Phlebotomus papatasi, main vector of zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis, in selected counties of Khuzestan Province, 2018

Phlebotomus papatasi, the main vector of cutaneous leishmaniasis with the agent of Leishmania major is in Iran that is widely distributed in the country. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of climatic factors on the presence probability of a vector in some counties of Khuzestan Province.

In this cross-sectional study, sand flies were collected from 5 selected counties during two seasons. The climatic information of the study areas was obtained from the Meteorological Organization. Spearman correlation coefficient was used to investigate the presence probability of the main vector with environmental variables. The spatial distribution of the main vector was prepared in ArcGIS 10.5.

Of the 884 collected sand flies, 506 of them were Ph. papatasi. The highest number of Ph. papatasi was observed in Ahvaz 151 (29.8%) and the lowest number was observed in Andimeshk 4 (0.79%). There was a significant difference between the geographical location and the probability of being the main vector of rural cutaneous leishmaniasis (P˂0.0001). The temperature was significantly different in the sampling areas (P= 0.024). With the influence of the temperature factor, the highest and lowest probability of vector was reported in Dasht-e-Azadegan (0.71 ± 0.05) and Andimeshk (0.01 ± 0.03), respectively.

In the present study, Ph. papatasi is a dominant species. By controlling the confounding effect of environmental factor, temperature, there was a significant difference between the presence probability of this species in Andimeshk county with other counties.