Latitudes mediate the association between influenza activity and meteorological factors: A nationwide modelling analysis in 45 Japanese prefectures from 2000 to 2018
Graphical abstract
Section snippets
Background
Climate change has raised increasing concerns over the effect of weather conditions on public health, with the transmission of infectious diseases being one of the major focuses (Goggins et al., 2013, Lam et al., 2018a, Lam et al., 2018b, Wang et al., 2018a, Wang et al., 2018b). Of different infectious diseases, influenza is a high burden respiratory disease caused by influenza viruses, which could result in severe illnesses such as pneumonia. According to the estimate from Centers for Disease
Data
This study included 45 prefectures of Japan, which are, from north to south, Hokkaido, Aomori, Akita, Iwate, Yamagata, Miyagi, Niigata, Fukushima, Ishikawa, Tochigi, Toyama, Gunma, Ibaraki, Nagano, Fukui, Gifu, Tokyo, Yamanashi, Chiba, Kanagawa, Tottori, Kyoto, Aichi, Shimane, Hyogo, Shizuoka, Okayama, Osaka, Nara, Hiroshima, Mie, Kagawa, Yamaguchi, Tokushima, Wakayama, Ehime, Kochi, Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Oita, Kumamoto, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, and Okinawa (Fig. 1). Shiga and Saitama were
Descriptive statistics
Fig. 2A–E show the spatiotemporal distributions of ILI incidence and the meteorological factors. The incidence mostly peaked in late-January to Mid-March every year regardless of prefecture. During the study period, the incidence of influenza was generally higher in Fukui, Oita, Miyazaki, and Okinawa. Strong seasonal patterns were observed for temperature and vapour pressure, as their mean values were higher in summer times. Seasonality of relative humidity and total rainfall were less obvious;
Discussion
Seasonal influenza generates serious public health impacts worldwide. In this study, we elucidate the association between meteorological factors and influenza activity using an 18-year dataset from 45 Japanese prefectures having different climatic characteristics by their latitudes. We found that lower temperature and lower absolute humidity were statistically significantly associated with a higher risk of influenza over the majority of the prefectures in Japan. Particularly, the correlation
Conclusions
Our findings showed that even though the range of latitudes in Japan is small, the relationships between meteorological factors and influenza activity were mediated by the latitude. Particularly, absolute humidity played a more important role associated with the influenza seasonality, but its effect could be hampered in a low-latitude temperate region having a warmer climate. The results offer a high-resolution characterization of the role of meteorological factors on influenza seasonality on
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31871340, 71974165). We thank Dr. Ayako Sumi's team for providing the data for analysis.
Authors’ contributions
KCC, JL, and AS conceived the study. KCC, JL, and SYFL performed the analysis. LW, JL, and AS contributed to the acquired data of the study. KCC, SYFL, and MHW contributed to the results interpretation. KCC, KMJ, and SYFL drafted the paper. All authors have read and approved the final paper.
Data sharing
All data will be shared upon the acceptance of the paper.
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