Time Series Analysis of Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome: A Case Study in Jiaonan County, China

PLoS One. 2016 Oct 5;11(10):e0163771. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0163771. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

Exact prediction of Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) epidemics must improve to establish effective preventive measures in China. A Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model was applied to establish a highly predictive model of HFRS. Meteorological factors were considered external variables through a cross correlation analysis. Then, these factors were included in the SARIMA model to determine if they could improve the predictive ability of HFRS epidemics in the region. The optimal univariate SARIMA model was identified as (0,0,2)(1,1,1)12. The R2 of the prediction of HFRS cases from January 2014 to December 2014 was 0.857, and the Root mean square error (RMSE) was 2.708. However, the inclusion of meteorological variables as external regressors did not significantly improve the SARIMA model. This result is likely because seasonal variations in meteorological variables were included in the seasonal characteristics of the HFRS itself.

MeSH terms

  • China / epidemiology
  • Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome / epidemiology*
  • Humans
  • Incidence
  • Meteorological Concepts
  • Models, Statistical
  • Seasons

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Program on Major Scientific Research Project granted by MOST of China (Grant No. 2012CB955500-955504), http://www.most.gov.cn/, H.R.; the funder conceived and designed the experiments, and also contributed to the writing of the manuscript; and by Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety (Fudan Univeristy), Ministry of Education, China (Grant No. GW2014-4), http://sph.fudan.edu.cn/, H.R.; the funder conceived and designed the experiments, and also contributed to the writing of the manuscript.