An epidemiological analysis of the Beijing 2008 Hand-Foot-Mouth epidemic

Abstract

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the epidemiological data concerning the 18445 HFMD-infected cases in Beijing in 2008. The main findings are as follows. (i) Seasonal variations in incidence were observed, with a peak observed during the summer season, especially in May. Male patients outnumber female patients by 1.57 : 1. (ii) Most cases occurred in children 4 years old or younger. Outperforming Weibull distribution and Gamma distribution as to model fitness when analyzing patient ages, log-normal distribution indicates that the estimated mean age is 3.4 years. (iii) The age distribution seems to indicate cyclic peaks with roughly one-year intervals. (iv) Correlation analyses (ρ = 0.9864) show that time of birth in different months has an impact on the chance of being infected by HFMD. Birth month seems to present a high risk factor on infants and young children.(v) The morbidity rate is 132.7/100000 during the HFMD epidemic in Beijing in 2008. The morbidity map shows that the risks of HFMD infection in areas close to the city center and suburbans are much lower than those in the urban-rural transition zones. Spatial risks inferred from the morbidity map demonstrate a clear circular pattern. (vi) The prevention and control measures taken by the public health departments seem to be effective during the summer season, resulting in the early ending of the epidemic (one month earlier than the natural season) and reduced outbreak size.Hand-Foot-Mouth disease, epidemiological analysis, spread mechanism, risk factor, morbidity map, Beijing Citation:

A Case-Control Study to Identify Environmental Risk Factors for Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease Outbreaks in Beijing

“…Multiple linear regression analysis identified temperature as a significant risk factor, which was consistent with the findings of several ecological studies (9,10,12,16) and epidemic trends in Beijing (6)(7)(8). Meanwhile, the univariate analysis showed that temperature was not a significant risk factor.…”

“…Based on our results from the univariate analysis, linear regression analysis, and logistic regression analysis, class grade (age) was significantly associated with HFMD outbreaks. Previous surveillance data and studies (6)(7)(8) in Beijing also showed that 2-4-year-old children were more prone to acquire HFMD infections than 4-6-year-old children. Because of the lack of circulating antibodies, 0-4-year-old children are most susceptible to HFMD infections (22,23).…”

“…In 2012, for example, there were 38,558 diagnosed cases of HFMD, of which 355 were considered severe. At least 2z of HFMD cases are directly caused by initial outbreaks, whereas the number of secondary infections is much greater (6)(7)(8). Therefore, the development of prevention and control methods is the key to control the spread of HFMD.…”

“…Therefore, the development of prevention and control methods is the key to control the spread of HFMD. Surveillance data collected in Beijing from 2008 to 2011 has shown that the prevalence of HFMD is obviously seasonal (the peaks appear in July), and suburban and preschool clustering is evident (6)(7)(8). On the basis of previous correlational studies (9-13), we speculated that environmental factors, including humidity, temperature, and atmospheric pressure, may be relative to incidence of HFMD outbreaks.…”

Modeling of epidemic spreading with white Gaussian noise

“…The history of Homo sapiens is always closely interrelated with the study of diseases. Whether it be the Black Death in Europe in the fourteenth century or the superbug that recently spread across the globe like wildfire [1,2], scientists have always looked at diseases with great interest [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. In the well-known theoretical SIS model, the population is divided into two disjoint classes, susceptible individuals and infected individuals, for which the percentages at time t are denoted by s(t) and i(t), respectively [11][12][13][14].…”