Analysis of factors evident in the relation between railways and the incidence of dysentery using linear regression

Abstract

Dysentery is a major infectious diseases that affects public health and the quality of life in Jiangsu Province. Since the development of the railways, the incidence of dysentery in the general population living near railway lines has increased. This research investigates the relationship between the geographical distribution of the railways and the incidence of dysentery in Jiangsu Province, and suggests a method for predicting dysentery in such areas. We used previously published literature, statistics, and known physiological properties of Shigella to analyse bacterial dysentery data for Jiangsu Province for the period from 2001 to 2012. The results indicate that railways could be indicative of the transmission of dysentery. Analysis of the incidence of dysentery in relation to the distribution of the railways using linear regression found that the incidence of dysentery in Jiangsu Province for 2001–2012 was linearly related to the buffer distance from the particular railway line. Furthermore, both regression parameters were affected by meteorological parameters, and the railway site was linearly related to the incidence of dysentery in cities along the railway.

Keywords:

• Incidence of dysentery
• railways
• meteorological and social factors
• linear regression
• principal component analysis

Acknowledgments

We should like to thank for Professor Guo for supplying data, and Haifang Guo, Yibin Xu, Yu Wang, and Meng Xiao for discussions of the material presented in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Special Fund for Forest Scientific Research into Public Welfare and The National Advanced Technology Research and Development Program of China.