Correlation analysis for the attack of bacillary dysentery and meteorological factors based on the Chinese medicine theory of Yunqi and the medical-meteorological forecast model.

OBJECTIVE

To explore the impact of meteorological factors on the outbreak of bacillary dysentery, so as to provide suggestions for disease prevention.

METHODS

Based on the Chinese medicine theory of Yunqi, the descriptive statistics, single-factor correlation analysis and back-propagation artificial neural net-work were conducted using data on five basic meteorological factors and data on incidence of bacillary dysentery in Beijing, China, for the period 1970-2004.

RESULTS

The incidence of bacillary dysentery showed significant positive correlation relationship with the precipitation, relative humidity, vapor pressure, and temperature, respectively. The incidence of bacillary dysentery showed a negatively correlated relationship with the wind speed and the change trend of average wind speed. The results of medical-meteorological forecast model showed a relatively high accuracy rate.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a close relationship between the meteorological factors and the incidence of bacillary dysentery, but the contributions of which to the onset of bacillary dysentery are different to each other.