Abstract
The influence of meteorological determinants on tuberculosis (TB) incidence remains severely under-discussed, especially through the perspective of time series analysis. In the current study, we used a distributed lag nonlinear model (DLNM) to analyze a 10-year series of consecutive surveillance data. We found that, after effectively controlling for autocorrelation, the changes in meteorological factors related to temperature, humidity, wind and sunshine were significantly associated with subsequent fluctuations in TB incidence: average temperature was inversely associated with TB incidence at a lag period of 2 months; total precipitation and minimum relative humidity were also inversely associated with TB incidence at lag periods of 3 and 4 months, respectively; average wind velocity and total sunshine hours exhibited an instant rather than lagged influence on TB incidence. Our study results suggest that preceding meteorological factors may have a noticeable effect on future TB incidence; informed prevention and preparedness measures for TB can therefore be constructed on the basis of meteorological variations.
Highlights
Tuberculosis (TB) is a widely distributed infectious disease, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis; roughly one-quarter of the world’s population has been infected[1]
Spatial–temporal characteristics of TB incidence have been investigated by commonly used time series models, such as ARIMA, seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA), and nonlinear autoregressive neural networks[7,8], the influence of meteorological determinants remains severely under-discussed
After thorough literature review, we identified only two pertinent studies: in one study, following application of a spatial panel data model, the authors reported that temperature, precipitation, and wind speed were significantly associated with TB incidence; in the other study, an unmeasured component model (UCM) revealed an identifiable cross correlation between historical sunshine data and TB incidence[11,12]
Summary
Tuberculosis (TB) is a widely distributed infectious disease, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis; roughly one-quarter of the world’s population has been infected[1]. Huge progress has been achieved in reduction of TB-associated mortality, currently China still has the third largest number of TB cases globally, accounting for around one-tenth of the world’s total[3]. It has long been suggested by epidemiological studies that meteorological factors, typically temperature, humidity and wind, can influence the incidence of infectious diseases.
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