Malcolm Bianca L
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, 722 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Spat Spatiotemporal Epidemiol. 2014 Apr;8:35-45. doi: 10.1016/j.sste.2014.01.001. Epub 2014 Jan 22.
Understanding the quantitative disease dynamics of influenza is important in developing strategies to control its spread. This research analyzed the dominant spread process of epidemic influenza in the continental United States over a 41-year period. Spatial autocorrelation and simple correlation were applied to pneumonia and influenza mortality to observe the effect of distance and population on the between-state transmission of seasonal influenza. Annual influenza epidemics exhibited distance-based spatial spread at the peak of activity, but did not undergo significant population-based spread at any point. Geographically-close states (<500 miles) showed higher correlations in the start, peak and end of annual epidemics compared with geographically-distant states. Additionally, significant local clustering was found in the Midwest, Ohio River Valley and Northeastern regions as well as Nevada and Utah throughout an influenza season. This research may be combined with others in order to determine the main epidemic pathways of seasonal influenza in the US.
了解流感的定量疾病动态对于制定控制其传播的策略至关重要。本研究分析了41年间美国大陆流行性感冒的主要传播过程。将空间自相关和简单相关应用于肺炎和流感死亡率，以观察距离和人口对季节性流感州际传播的影响。年度流感流行在活动高峰期呈现基于距离的空间传播，但在任何时候都没有显著的基于人口的传播。与地理上距离较远的州相比，地理上接近的州（<500英里）在年度流行的开始、高峰和结束时表现出更高的相关性。此外，在整个流感季节，在美国中西部、俄亥俄河谷和东北部地区以及内华达州和犹他州发现了显著的局部聚集现象。本研究可与其他研究相结合，以确定美国季节性流感的主要流行途径。
