Q Fever in Individuals in the Eurasian Continent: A 50-Year Literature Review (1973 - 2022)

Q fever is a naturally occurring zoonotic disease with a zoonotic range covering all continents of the globe. The reservoirs and vectors of Coxiella burnetii are ixodid ticks and their hosts. This disease is characterized by a variety of mechanisms and routes in humans and animals (e.g., vector-borne, foodborne, airborne, and dust-borne). The disease often runs in the form of a fever. This article will review the incidence of human Q fever on the Eurasian continent over the past 50 years. Because Q fever is one of the unobserved infectious diseases, the occurrence of Q fever in humans in most countries is impossible to evaluate. Since this literature review is the primary resource for tracking scientific trends and research findings on the subject, the main goal of this study has focused on estimating the index of the incidence of Q fever infection among humans and compiling a 50-year literature review from August 1973 to July 2022. This study investigated the articles published in PubMed, Scopus, CyberLink, Web of Science, and Google Scholar by reviewing the scientific literature and official systematic reviews. The data were obtained using the keywords “Q fever AND prevalence/incidence” and “Q fever AND epidemiology.” The incidence of Q fever varies considerably from country to country due to epidemiological differences and whether the disease is detectable or not. Depending on the location of the country, endemics or outbreaks occur. At the Third World Health Forum in 1950, the possible danger of Q fever to human health was realized, and decisions were made stimulating research into the global prevalence of the causative agent of the disease. Since then, numerous epidemiological studies have shown that Q fever occurs almost everywhere worldwide except in Antarctica and New Zealand. This review’s available literature and ongoing epidemiological investigations in many countries show that Q fever needs to be regarded as a global community health issue. However, in the case of Kazakhstan, there is currently no information on the incidence of infection in humans and farm animals that requires further research on the incidence of Q fever, especially in coronavirus disease 2019.