Urbanization impact on scorpion stings: An epidemiological study

Accidents caused by venomous animals, especially scorpions, are a major public health problem due to the increase in incidence in recent decades, since scorpion species have become well adapted to urbanized environments. Nonetheless, the impact of urbanization in scorpionism is not clear. The objective of this study is to correlate the variation in the incidence of scorpion accidents with the rate of urbanized area. This was a retrospective, epidemiological study of accidents by scorpions in 376 of the most populous Brazilian cities in 2019 and compared to ten years earlier, using Spearman's correlation coefficient. Data were obtained by accessing DATASUS/TABNET and IBGE Cidades platforms. A weak negative correlation between scorpion stings and urbanization was found in 2009 (r_s = -0.145). The correlation between the variation in the incidence of scorpionism and the percentage of urbanized area was not significant. Although the highest incidence of scorpionism occurs in-more urbanized environments, there is a wide distribution of scorpion accidents, especially in tropical and subtropical regions due to climatic conditions, the level of urbanization of Brazilian municipalities was not the major factor in the increase of scorpion accidents.