Etiology of Interepidemic Periods of Mosquito-Borne Disease

Dengue viruses and malaria protozoa are of increasing global concern in public health. The diseases caused by these pathogens often show regular seasonal patterns in incidence because of the sensitivity of their mosquito vectors to climate. Between years in endemic areas, however, there can be furth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2000-08, Vol.97 (16), p.9335-9339
Main Authors: Hay, Simon I., Myers, Monica F., Burke, Donald S., Vaughn, David W., Endy, Timothy, Ananda, Nisalak, Shanks, G. Dennis, Snow, Robert W., Rogers, David J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biological Sciences
Biology
Climate models
Culicidae - parasitology
Culicidae - virology
Dengue
Dengue - epidemiology
Dengue - transmission
Disease
Disease vectors
Epidemics
Epidemiology
Fever
Humans
Insect Vectors
Malaria
Malaria - epidemiology
Malaria - transmission
Medical research
Mosquitoes
Population
Seasons
Statistical variance
Time series
Viruses
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Summary:Dengue viruses and malaria protozoa are of increasing global concern in public health. The diseases caused by these pathogens often show regular seasonal patterns in incidence because of the sensitivity of their mosquito vectors to climate. Between years in endemic areas, however, there can be further significant variation in case numbers for which public health systems are generally unprepared. There is an acute need for reliable predictions of within-year and between-year epidemic events. The prerequisite for developing any system of early warning is a detailed understanding of the factors involved in epidemic genesis. In this report we discuss the potential causes of the interepidemic periods in dengue hemorrhagic fever in Bangkok and of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in a highland area of western Kenya. The alternative causes are distinguished by a retrospective analysis of two unique and contemporaneous 33-year time series of epidemiological and associated meteorological data recorded at these two sites. We conclude that intrinsic population dynamics offer the most parsimonious explanation for the observed interepidemic periods of disease in these locations.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.97.16.9335