Short-term effects of meteorological factors on pediatric hand, foot, and mouth disease in Guangdong, China: a multi-city time-series analysis

BMC Infectious Diseases

Research Article

Qiao-Qun Ou¹  Yuming Guo²  Qi-Yong Liu³  Jun Yang³  Cui Guo⁴  Shuang-Quan Shen⁴  Chun-Quan Ou⁴ 

[1] Department of Pediatrics, Guangzhou First People’s Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, 510180, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China;Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland, 4006, Brisbane, QLD, Australia;State Key Laboratory of Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 102206, Beijing, China;State Key Laboratory of Organ Failure Research, Department of Biostatistics, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Tropical Disease Research, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, 510515, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China;

关键词: Hand, foot, and mouth disease;    Meteorological factors;    Mixed generalized additive model;    China;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12879-016-1846-y

 received in 2016-01-28, accepted in 2016-09-17,  发布年份 2016

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundLiterature shows inconsistency in meteorological effects on Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) in different cities. This multi-city study aims to investigate the meteorological effects on pediatric HFMD occurrences and the potential effect modification by geographic factors.MethodsBased on daily time-series data in eight major cities in Guangdong, China during 2009–2013, mixed generalized additive models were employed to estimate city-specific meteorological effects on pediatric HFMD. Then, a random-effect multivariate meta-analysis was conducted to obtain the pooled risks and to explore heterogeneity explained by city-level factors.ResultsThere were a total of 400,408 pediatric HFMD cases (children aged 0–14 years old) with an annual incidence rate of 16.6 cases per 1,000 children, clustered in males and children under 3 years old. Daily average temperature was positively associated with pediatric HFMD cases with the highest pooled relative risk (RR) of 1.52 (95 % CI: 1.30–1.77) at the 95th percentile of temperature (30.5 °C) as compared to the median temperature (23.5 °C). Significant non-linear positive effects of high relative humidity were also observed with a 13 % increase (RR = 1.13, 95 % CI: 1.00–1.28) in the risk of HFMD at the 99th percentile of relative humidity (86.9 %) as compared to the median value (78 %). The effect estimates showed geographic variations among the cities which was significantly associated with city’s latitude and longitude with an explained heterogeneity of 32 %.ConclusionsDaily average temperature and relative humidity had non-linear and delayed effects on pediatric HFMD and the effects varied across different cities. These findings provide important evidence for comprehensive understanding of the climatic effects on pediatric HFMD and for the authority to take targeted interventions and measures to control the occurrence and transmission of HFMD.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2016