The effect of meteorological factors on adolescent hand, foot, and mouth disease and associated effect modifiers

Abstract

Background

Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is a contagious viral illness that commonly affects infants and children. This infection is an emerging infectious disease in Rizhao in recent years. The present study examined the short-term effects of meteorological factors on adolescent HFMD in Rizhao.

Design

A generalized additive Poisson model was applied to estimate the effects of meteorological factors on adolescent HFMD occurrence in 2010–2012. Subgroup analyses were also conducted to examine the potential effect modifiers of the association in terms of age, sex, and occupation.

Results

A positive effect of temperature was observed (ER [excess risk]=1.93%, 95% CI: 1.05 to 2.82% for 1°C increase on lag 5 day). A negative effect of relative humidity at lag 1 day and positive effects were found on lag 5–7 days, and an adverse effect was observed for sunshine at lag days 3–4 (ER=−0.71%, 95% CI: −1.25 to −0.17% on lag day 4). We also found that age, sex, and occupation might be important effect modifiers of the effects of weather variables on HFMD.

Conclusions

This study suggests that meteorological factors might be an important predictor of adolescent HFMD occurrence in Rizhao. Age, sex, and occupation might be important effect modifiers of the effects.

• hand, foot and mouth disease
• weather
• mean temperature
• relative humidity

To access the supplementary material for this article, please see Supplementary files under Article Tools online

To access the supplementary material for this article, please see Supplementary files under Article Tools online

Authors’ contributions

HL conceived the study and participated in the statistical analysis and the drafting of the manuscript. HW, QW, and HW contributed to the acquisition of the data, drafting, and critical revision of the manuscript. HW and QX participated in the statistical analysis and the drafting and critical revision of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for numerous helpful comments.

Conflict of interest and funding

The authors declare that they have no competing interests. This study was supported by a grant from National Major Research Program of China (No.: 2012CB955500).

Notes

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