Wu Chih-Chieh, Grimson Roger C, Amos Christopher I, Shete Sanjay
Department of Epidemiology, Unit 1340, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, 1155 Pressler Street, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.
Biom J. 2008 Feb;50(1):86-96. doi: 10.1002/bimj.200610374.
Temporal incidence patterns of point epidemics often contain periods of unusually low or high frequencies. Identifying variations in incidence frequencies, which may be caused by changes in exposure to infectious or environmental agents, may provide important insights into the pathogenesis or etiology of a disease. We propose and formulate new statistical tests for temporal and space-time anomalies that are based on the minimum frequency in a unit of time and that are meaningful for the characteristic incidence patterns of the cases studied. Among the most widely applied methods are the Ederer-Myers-Mantel test, the Maxima test, and the scan test, which are all sensitive to the maximum frequency within a short period of time. We elucidate the importance and utility of our new tests and the existing tests and suggest a systematic statistical analysis of reported disease anomalies using these tests combined. Data on a temporal series of adolescent suicide from the US National Center for Health Statistics were analyzed using these methods.
点源流行的时间发病模式通常包含频率异常低或高的时期。识别发病率的变化，这些变化可能由接触传染性或环境因素的改变引起，可能为疾病的发病机制或病因提供重要见解。我们提出并制定了基于单位时间内最低频率的新的时间和时空异常统计检验方法，这些方法对于所研究病例的特征性发病模式具有意义。应用最广泛的方法包括埃德勒-迈尔斯-曼特尔检验、最大值检验和扫描检验，这些方法都对短时间内的最高频率敏感。我们阐明了新检验和现有检验的重要性和实用性，并建议使用这些检验相结合的方法对报告的疾病异常进行系统的统计分析。使用这些方法对美国国家卫生统计中心的青少年自杀时间序列数据进行了分析。
