INTRODUCTION : Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease of public health importance driven by climate and ecological factors. It is noted as a re-emerging disease by WHO, and the number of cases are increasing steadily. The present study was undertaken to understand the epidemiological profile and trend of leptospirosis, analyze the trends of leptospirosis cases between 2021 & 2024, and forecast the disease.
METHODOLOGY : The data of confirmed leptospirosis cases in Tamil Nadu were retrieved from the IDSP- IHIP portal and entered in MS- Excel. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 20.0. Descriptive statistics was used. For analysing the trend and to forecast the same, the time series analysis method was used.
RESULTS : The positivity rate of leptospirosis was 9.7% (95% CI: 9.5 to 9.9). The mean age of the leptospirosis cases was 35 years. Of the 7080 cases, females were 50.18%. The majority of cases were from Chennai (35.4%). The trend of leptospirosis depicts that the number of cases starts to increase June to December. This typically corresponds with the rainy season of Tamil Nadu. The predicted number of cases for January 2021 to March 2024 made by the model matched with original number reported in the IDSP- IHIP portal. On forecasting, the model showed a steady increase in the number of cases each year, still following the seasonal trend.
CONCLUSION : Leptospirosis shows a seasonal trend with more cases from June to December, and it correlates with the rainy and flooding season of the region.