Space-time heterogeneity of hand, foot and mouth disease in children and its potential driving factors in Henan, China

Abstract

BackgroundHand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) has become a substantial threat recently. However few studies have quantified spatiotemporal heterogeneity of HFMD and detected spatiotemporal interactive effect of potential driving factors on this disease.MethodsUsing GeoDetector and Bayesian space-time hierarchy model, we characterized the epidemiology of HFMD in Henan, one of the largest population provinces in China, from 2012 to 2013, and quantified the impacts of potential driving factors.ResultsNotably, 21.43 and 24.60% counties were identified as hot and cold spots, respectively. Spatially, the hotspots were mainly clustered in regions where the economic level was high. Temporally, the highest incidence period of HFMD was discovered to be in late spring and early summer. The impact of meteorological and socio-economic factors on the disease are significant, and this study found that a 1 °C rise in temperature was related to an increase of 4.09% in the HFMD incidence, a 1% increment in relative humidity was associated with a 1.77% increase of the disease, and a 1% increment in ratio of urban to rural population was associated with a 0.16% increase of the disease.ConclusionMeteorological and socio-economic factors presented significantly association with HFMD incidence, high-risk mainly appeared in large cities and their adjacent regions in hot and humid season. These findings will be helpful for HFMD risk control and disease-prevention policies implementation.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12879-018-3546-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Integration of a Kalman filter in the geographically weighted regression for modeling the transmission of hand, foot and mouth disease

“…Previous studies have mainly focused on characteristics of the epidemic [1,15,19], such as spatiotemporal patterns and correlations with various risk factors. HFMD epidemics have significant temporal variations and seasonality features, which vary between regions [20][21][22][23]. HFMD epidemics were spatially dispersed across counties in mainland China in the summer and winter, while clustered in spring and autumn; they were also geographically clustered in and closely linked to regions with high levels of monthly precipitation [3,24].…”

Atypical hand, foot, and mouth disease in an adult patient: a case report and literature review

“…In relation to epidemiology, HFMD has been a massive public health concern in India and Southeast Asia due to the high incidence of cases and common epidemic outbreaks (3). Numerous studies have been performed aimed at identifying predictive factors that could anticipate possible outbreaks in Asia (25)(26)(27)(28). Overall, meteorological factors such as temperature and humidity have been identified as possible predictive factors for the occurrence of outbreaks (29).…”

Spatial-temporal heterogeneity of hand, foot and mouth disease and impact of meteorological factors in arid/ semi-arid regions: a case study in Ningxia, China

“…Overall temporal trend was described by (b 0 t * + v t ), v t~N (0, σ 2 v ) [28], and t * t * =t − t mid indicates the temporal span. The term b 1i , quantifies the deviation from the overall temporal variation b 0 [9,27]. The parameter ε it was noise term.…”

“…In Northern Thailand, HFMD occurred throughout the year but peaked in the rainy and cold seasons [8]. In regional level, peaks of HFMD were observed in spring and summer (March to July) in Henan province (located in eastern central China) [9]. In Yixing city (one of the biggest cities in southern China in Jiangsu province) HFMD were also found to be most prevalent in summer [10].…”