Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
Department of Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Dec 24;19(1):165. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19010165.
Extreme precipitation events (EPE) change the natural and built environments and alter human behavior in ways that facilitate infectious disease transmission. EPEs are expected with high confidence to increase in frequency and are thus of great public health importance. This scoping review seeks to summarize the mechanisms and severity of impacts of EPEs on infectious diseases, to provide a conceptual framework for the influence of EPEs on infectious respiratory diseases, and to define areas of future study currently lacking in this field. The effects of EPEs are well-studied with respect to enteric, vector-borne, and allergic illness where they are shown to moderately increase risk of illness, but not well-understood in relation to infectious respiratory illness. We propose a framework for a similar influence of EPEs on infectious respiratory viruses through several plausible pathways: decreased UV radiation, increased ambient relative humidity, and changes to human behavior (increased time indoors and use of heating and cooling systems). However, limited work has evaluated meteorologic risk factors for infectious respiratory diseases. Future research is needed to evaluate the effects of EPEs on infectious respiratory diseases using individual-level case surveillance, fine spatial scales, and lag periods suited to the incubation periods of the disease under study, as well as a full characterization of susceptible, vulnerable, and sensitive population characteristics.
极端降水事件（EPE）改变了自然和人为环境，并以促进传染病传播的方式改变了人类行为。高频度的极端降水事件预计将增加，因此对公共卫生具有重要意义。本范围综述旨在总结 EPE 对传染病的影响机制和严重程度，为 EPE 对传染性呼吸道疾病的影响提供概念框架，并确定该领域目前缺乏的未来研究领域。EPE 对肠道、媒介传播和过敏疾病的影响已有充分研究，这些疾病表明 EPE 会适度增加患病风险，但与传染性呼吸道疾病的关系尚未得到充分理解。我们提出了一个 EPE 通过几种可能的途径对传染性呼吸道病毒产生类似影响的框架：紫外线辐射减少、环境相对湿度增加以及人类行为的改变（室内时间增加和使用加热和冷却系统）。然而，评估气象风险因素对传染性呼吸道疾病的工作有限。未来的研究需要使用个体水平的病例监测、适合疾病潜伏期的精细空间尺度和滞后期，以及对易感人群、脆弱人群和敏感人群特征的全面描述，来评估 EPE 对传染性呼吸道疾病的影响。
