Department of Dermatology, Venereology and Allergology, University Medical Center and Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, and Center of Excellence in Dermatology, Mannheim, Germany.
Barcelona Institute for Global Health, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2021 Nov 1;15(11):e0009831. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0009831. eCollection 2021 Nov.
The epidemiology of neglected tropical diseases (NTD) is persistently underprioritized, despite NTD being widespread among the poorest populations and in the least developed countries on earth. This situation necessitates thorough and efficient public health intervention. Romania is at the brink of becoming a developed country. However, this South-Eastern European country appears to be a region that is susceptible to an underestimated burden of parasitic diseases despite recent public health reforms. Moreover, there is an evident lack of new epidemiologic data on NTD after Romania's accession to the European Union (EU) in 2007. Using the national ICD-10 dataset for hospitalized patients in Romania, we generated time series datasets for 2008-2018. The objective was to gain deep understanding of the epidemiological distribution of three selected and highly endemic parasitic diseases, namely, ascariasis, enterobiasis and cystic echinococcosis (CE), during this period and forecast their courses for the ensuing two years. Through descriptive and inferential analysis, we observed a decline in case numbers for all three NTD. Several distributional particularities at regional level emerged. Furthermore, we performed predictions using a novel automated time series (AutoTS) machine learning tool and could interestingly show a stable course for these parasitic NTD. Such predictions can help public health officials and medical organizations to implement targeted disease prevention and control. To our knowledge, this is the first study involving a retrospective analysis of ascariasis, enterobiasis and CE on a nationwide scale in Romania. It is also the first to use AutoTS technology for parasitic NTD.
被忽视的热带病（NTD）的流行病学一直被忽视，尽管 NTD 在地球上最贫穷的人群和最不发达国家中广泛存在。这种情况需要彻底和有效的公共卫生干预。罗马尼亚即将成为一个发达国家。然而，这个东南欧国家似乎是一个寄生虫病负担被低估的地区，尽管最近进行了公共卫生改革。此外，自 2007 年罗马尼亚加入欧盟（EU）以来，关于 NTD 的新流行病学数据明显缺乏。我们使用罗马尼亚住院患者的国家 ICD-10 数据集，生成了 2008-2018 年的时间序列数据集。目的是深入了解这一时期三种选定的高度流行寄生虫病（即蛔虫病、蛲虫病和囊型包虫病）的流行病学分布，并预测未来两年的发病趋势。通过描述性和推理分析，我们观察到所有三种 NTD 的病例数量都有所下降。在区域层面上出现了一些分布上的特殊性。此外，我们使用一种新颖的自动时间序列（AutoTS）机器学习工具进行预测，有趣的是，这些寄生虫 NTD 的发病趋势保持稳定。这些预测可以帮助公共卫生官员和医疗机构实施有针对性的疾病预防和控制。据我们所知，这是罗马尼亚首次对全国范围内的蛔虫病、蛲虫病和包虫病进行回顾性分析，也是首次使用 AutoTS 技术对寄生虫 NTD 进行预测。
