PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Many infectious disease forecasting models in the United States (US) are built with data partitioned into geopolitical regions centered on human activity as opposed to regions defined by natural ecosystems; although useful for data collection and intervention, this has the potential to mask biological relationships between the environment and disease. We explored this concept by analyzing the correlations between climate and West Nile virus (WNV) case data aggregated to geopolitical and ecological regions. We compared correlations between minimum, maximum, and mean annual temperature; precipitation; and annual WNV neuroinvasive disease (WNND) case data from 2005 to 2019 when partitioned into (a) climate regions defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and (b) Level I ecoregions defined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We found that correlations between climate and WNND in NOAA climate regions and EPA ecoregions were often contradictory in both direction and magnitude, with EPA ecoregions more often supporting previously established biological hypotheses and environmental dynamics underlying vector-borne disease transmission. Using ecological regions to examine the relationships between climate and disease cases can enhance the predictive power of forecasts at various scales, motivating a conceptual shift in large-scale analyses from geopolitical frameworks to more ecologically meaningful regions.
摘要：
美国（US）的许多传染病预测模型都是通过将数据划分为以人类活动为中心的地缘政治区域而不是由自然生态系统定义的区域来构建的；尽管对于数据收集和干预很有用，这有可能掩盖环境与疾病之间的生物学关系。我们通过分析汇总到地缘政治和生态区域的气候与西尼罗河病毒（WNV）病例数据之间的相关性来探索这一概念。我们比较了最小值，最大值,和年平均温度；降水；2005年至2019年的年度WNV神经侵袭性疾病（WNND）病例数据，分为（a）国家海洋和大气管理局（NOAA）定义的气候区域和（b）环境保护署（EPA）定义的I级生态区域。我们发现，NOAA气候区和EPA生态区的气候与WNND之间的相关性通常在方向和大小上都是矛盾的，EPA生态区更经常支持先前建立的生物学假设和媒介传播疾病传播的环境动态。使用生态区域来检查气候与疾病病例之间的关系可以增强各种尺度的预测能力，促使大规模分析从地缘政治框架到更具生态意义的区域的概念转变。
