Short-Term Weather Variability in Chicago and Hospitalizations for Kawasaki Disease
| Autor: | Jonathan A. Patz, Leonardo D. Epstein, Nancy Innocentini, Judith A. Guzman-Cottrill, William Checkley, Stanford T. Shulman |
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| Rok vydání: | 2009 |
| Předmět: |
Chicago
Medical Audit Pediatrics medicine.medical_specialty Epidemiology business.industry Mucocutaneous Lymph Node Syndrome Hospitals Pediatric medicine.disease Term (time) Hospitalization hemic and lymphatic diseases medicine Humans Kawasaki disease Poisson Distribution cardiovascular diseases skin and connective tissue diseases business Weather Retrospective Studies Demography |
| Zdroj: | Epidemiology. 20:194-201 |
| ISSN: | 1044-3983 |
| DOI: | 10.1097/ede.0b013e3181961a9b |
| Popis: | Kawasaki disease exhibits a distinct seasonality, and short-term changes in weather may affect its occurrence.: To investigate the effects of weather variability on the occurrence of this syndrome, we conducted a time-between-events analysis of consecutive admissions for Kawasaki disease to a large pediatric hospital in Chicago. We used gamma regression to model the times between admissions. This is a novel application of gamma regression to model the time between admissions as a function of subject-specific covariates.: We recorded 723 admissions in the 18-year (1986-2003) study period, of which 700 had complete data for analysis. Admissions for Kawasaki disease in Chicago were seasonal: The mean time between admissions was 34% shorter (relative time = 0.66, 95% confidence interval 0.54-0.81) from January-March than from July-September. In 1998, we recorded a larger number of admissions for Kawasaki disease (n = 65) than in other years (mean n = 37). January-March months of 1998 were warmer by a mean of 3 degrees C (1.5 degrees C-4.4 degrees C) and the mean time between admissions was 48% shorter (relative time = 0.52, 0.36-0.75) than in equivalent periods of other study years.: Our findings show that atypical changes in weather affect the occurrence of Kawasaki disease and are compatible with a link to an infectious trigger. The analysis of interevent times using gamma regression is an alternative to Poisson regression in modeling a time series of sparse daily counts. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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