title: Animal Ownership and Touching Enrich the Context of Social Contacts Relevant to the Spread of Human Infectious Diseases.
abstract: Many human infectious diseases originate from animals or are transmitted through animal vectors. We aimed to identify factors that are predictive of ownership and touching of animals, assess whether animal ownership influences social contact behavior, and estimate the probability of a major zoonotic outbreak should a transmissible influenza-like pathogen be present in animals, all in the setting of a densely populated European country. A diary-based social contact survey (n = 1768) was conducted in Flanders, Belgium, from September 2010 until February 2011. Many participants touched pets (46%), poultry (2%) or livestock (2%) on a randomly assigned day, and a large proportion of participants owned such animals (51%, 15% and 5%, respectively). Logistic regression models indicated that larger households are more likely to own an animal and, unsurprisingly, that animal owners are more likely to touch animals. We observed a significant effect of age on animal ownership and touching. The total number of social contacts during a randomly assigned day was modeled using weighted-negative binomial regression. Apart from age, household size and day type (weekend versus weekday and regular versus holiday period), animal ownership was positively associated with the total number of social contacts during the weekend. Assuming that animal ownership and/or touching are at-risk events, we demonstrate a method to estimate the outbreak potential of zoonoses. We show that in Belgium animal-human interactions involving young children (0-9 years) and adults (25-54 years) have the highest potential to cause a major zoonotic outbreak.
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Economics Research & Modeling of Infectious Diseases (CHERMID), Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium; Interuniversity Institute for Biostatistics and statistical Bioinformatics (I-BioStat), Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium.
authors.forename: Yimer Wasihun
authors.initials: YW
authors.lastname: Kifle
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Economics Research & Modeling of Infectious Diseases (CHERMID), Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium; Interuniversity Institute for Biostatistics and statistical Bioinformatics (I-BioStat), Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium.
authors.forename: Nele
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Goeyvaerts
authors.affiliation: Interuniversity Institute for Biostatistics and statistical Bioinformatics (I-BioStat), Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium.
authors.forename: Kim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Van Kerckhove
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Economics Research & Modeling of Infectious Diseases (CHERMID), Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium; Interuniversity Institute for Biostatistics and statistical Bioinformatics (I-BioStat), Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium; Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: Lander
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Willem
authors.affiliation: Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kucharski
authors.affiliation: Interuniversity Institute for Biostatistics and statistical Bioinformatics (I-BioStat), Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium.
authors.forename: Christel
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Faes
authors.affiliation: Evolutionary Ecology Group, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: Herwig
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Leirs
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Economics Research & Modeling of Infectious Diseases (CHERMID), Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium; Interuniversity Institute for Biostatistics and statistical Bioinformatics (I-BioStat), Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium.
authors.forename: Niel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hens
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Economics Research & Modeling of Infectious Diseases (CHERMID), Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium; School of Public Health and Community Medicine, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Beutels
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000818:Animals; D001530:Belgium / Q000453:epidemiology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000635:transmission*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D058751:Livestock; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010067:Ownership / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D057805:Pets; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods; D011200:Poultry; D011897:Random Allocation; D012919:Social Behavior; D055815:Young Adult; D015047:Zoonoses / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000635:transmission*