Faculty of Medicine, University of Queensland.
Department of Medicine, Townsville University Hospital.
Environ Health Prev Med. 2023;28:33. doi: 10.1265/ehpm.22-00177.
Townsville is in the dry tropics in Northern Australia and an endemic region for melioidosis. Melioidosis is an infectious disease caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei, a soil dwelling organism. The incidence of melioidosis is associated with high levels of rainfall and has been linked to multiple weather variables in other melioidosis endemic regions such as in Darwin. In contrast to Townsville, Darwin is in the wet-dry tropics in Northern Australia and receives 40% more rainfall. We assessed the relationship between melioidosis incidence and weather conditions in Townsville and compared the patterns to the findings in Darwin and other melioidosis endemic regions.
Performing a time series analysis from 1996 to 2020, we applied a negative binomial regression model to evaluate the link between the incidence of melioidosis in Townsville and various weather variables. Akaike's information criterion was used to assess the most parsimonious model with best predictive performance. Fourier terms and lagged deviance residuals were included to control long term seasonal trends and temporal autocorrelation.
Humidity is the strongest predictor for melioidosis incidence in Townsville. Furthermore, the incidence of melioidosis showed a three-times rise in the Townsville region when >200 mm of rain fell within the fortnight. Prolonged rainfall had more impact than a heavy downpour on the overall melioidosis incident rate. There was no statistically significant increase in incidence with cloud cover in the multivariable model.
Consistent with other reports, melioidosis incidence can be attributed to humidity and rainfall in Townsville. In contrast to Darwin, there was no strong link between melioidosis cases and cloud cover and nor single large rainfall events.
汤斯维尔位于澳大利亚北部的干旱热带地区，是地方性的类鼻疽病流行区。类鼻疽病是一种由伯克霍尔德氏菌引起的传染病，这种土壤栖居生物是一种传染性疾病。类鼻疽病的发病率与降雨量高有关，并与其他类鼻疽病流行地区的多种天气变量有关，如达尔文。与汤斯维尔不同的是，达尔文位于澳大利亚北部的干湿热带地区，降雨量多 40%。我们评估了汤斯维尔类鼻疽病发病率与天气条件之间的关系，并将这些模式与达尔文和其他类鼻疽病流行地区的发现进行了比较。
我们从 1996 年到 2020 年进行了时间序列分析，应用负二项回归模型评估了汤斯维尔类鼻疽病发病率与各种天气变量之间的关系。采用赤池信息量准则来评估具有最佳预测性能的最简约模型。我们还纳入了傅立叶项和滞后偏差残差，以控制长期季节性趋势和时间自相关性。
湿度是汤斯维尔类鼻疽病发病率的最强预测因子。此外，当两周内降雨量超过 200 毫米时，汤斯维尔地区的类鼻疽病发病率上升了三倍。与大雨相比，长时间的降雨对总体类鼻疽病发病率的影响更大。在多变量模型中，云层覆盖没有统计学意义上的发病率增加。
与其他报告一致，汤斯维尔类鼻疽病的发病率可归因于湿度和降雨。与达尔文不同的是，类鼻疽病病例与云层覆盖之间没有很强的联系，也没有单一的大雨事件。
