Conjunction of factors triggering waves of seasonal influenza

eLife

Emre Kiciman¹  Jeffrey L Shaman²  Andrey Rzhetsky³  Joshua W Elliott⁴  Ishanu Chattopadhyay⁵ 

[1] Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, United States;Computation Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, United States;Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, United States;Information and Data Science Group, Microsoft Research, Redmond, United States;Institute of Genomics and Systems Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, United States;

关键词: poisson regression;    Granger causality;    matching analysis;    US influenza epidemic;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.30756

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Using several longitudinal datasets describing putative factors affecting influenza incidence and clinical data on the disease and health status of over 150 million human subjects observed over a decade, we investigated the source and the mechanistic triggers of influenza epidemics. We conclude that the initiation of a pan-continental influenza wave emerges from the simultaneous realization of a complex set of conditions. The strongest predictor groups are as follows, ranked by importance: (1) the host population’s socio- and ethno-demographic properties; (2) weather variables pertaining to specific humidity, temperature, and solar radiation; (3) the virus’ antigenic drift over time; (4) the host population’€™s land-based travel habits, and; (5) recent spatio-temporal dynamics, as reflected in the influenza wave auto-correlation. The models we infer are demonstrably predictive (area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve 80%) when tested with out-of-sample data, opening the door to the potential formulation of new population-level intervention and mitigation policies.

【 授权许可】

Unknown