Abstract
BackgroundIn temperate regions, influenza epidemics occur in the winter and correlate with certain climatological parameters. In African tropical regions, the effects of climatological parameters on influenza epidemics are not well defined. This study aims to identify and model the effects of climatological parameters on seasonal influenza activity in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.MethodsWe studied the effects of weekly rainfall, humidity, and temperature on laboratory-confirmed influenza cases in Abidjan from 2007 to 2010. We used the Box-Jenkins method with the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) process to create models using data from 2007–2010 and to assess the predictive value of best model on data from 2011 to 2012.ResultsThe weekly number of influenza cases showed significant cross-correlation with certain prior weeks for both rainfall, and relative humidity. The best fitting multivariate model (ARIMAX (2,0,0) _RF) included the number of influenza cases during 1-week and 2-weeks prior, and the rainfall during the current week and 5-weeks prior. The performance of this model showed an increase of >3 % for Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and 2.5 % for Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) compared to the reference univariate ARIMA (2,0,0). The prediction of the weekly number of influenza cases during 2011–2012 with the best fitting multivariate model (ARIMAX (2,0,0) _RF), showed that the observed values were within the 95 % confidence interval of the predicted values during 97 of 104 weeks.ConclusionIncluding rainfall increases the performances of fitted and predicted models. The timing of influenza in Abidjan can be partially explained by rainfall influence, in a setting with little change in temperature throughout the year. These findings can help clinicians to anticipate influenza cases during the rainy season by implementing preventive measures.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-016-3503-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
In temperate regions, influenza epidemics occur in the winter and correlate with certain climatological parameters
Studies demonstrated a strong correlation between relative humidity, ambient temperature and influenza viruses’ circulation and their considerable impact on the occurrence of influenza epidemics [7, 8]
Alonso showed that temperature and humidity are more favorable to influenza transmission in tropical regions compared to transmission by direct contact [13]
Summary
Influenza epidemics occur in the winter and correlate with certain climatological parameters. The seasonality of influenza has been well described in temperate regions where influenza activity typically coincides with winter [1,2,3,4]. In these temperate countries, low temperatures, low relative or absolute humidity, minimal solar radiation are associated with influenza related deaths [3, 5, 6]. Studies demonstrated a strong correlation between relative humidity, ambient temperature and influenza viruses’ circulation and their considerable impact on the occurrence of influenza epidemics [7, 8]. The objective of this study is to determine is there is any correlation between climatological parameters and influenza infection and to what extent these parameters are useful to forecast influenza transmission in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire
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