Chagas’ disease, caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, is spread mostly by Triatominae bugs. High carbon dioxide emission and strong infra-red (IR) radiation are indicative of their presence. Periods of low atmospheric water saturation favor their dispersal, when the bugs’ IR perception is high.
The Fast Subset Scan (FSScan) is very efficient for the detection of the most likely geographic cluster. Covariate studies associating the presence of regular clusters with environmental factors are routinely done using the Circular Scan, the simplest version of the Spatial Scan statistic. However, if the study employs irregular clusters instead, accurate results depend on the generation of a rich family of variants of the primary cluster.
Objective
We employ climate information to assess the possible spatial dependence on the occurrence of Chagas’ disease irregular clusters in Central Brazil, using a variant of the Spatial Scan Statistic, the Geo-Dynamic Scan (GDScan).