Seasonality of Rotavirus Hospitalizations at Costa Rica’s National Children’s Hospital in 2010–2015

Katarina Ureña-Castro, Silvia Ávila, Mariela Gutierrez, Elena N. Naumova, Rolando Ulloa-Gutierrez and Alfredo Mora-Guevara
Additional contact information
Katarina Ureña-Castro: Servicio de Pediatría, Hospital William Allen Taylor, Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social (CCSS), Turrialba 30501, Costa Rica
Silvia Ávila: Posgrado de Pediatría, Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) & Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS), San José 2060, Costa Rica
Mariela Gutierrez: Servicio de Emergencias, Hospital Nacional de Niños “Dr. Carlos Sáenz Herrera”, Centro de Ciencias Médicas, Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS), San José 10103, Costa Rica
Elena N. Naumova: Division of Nutrition Data Science, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston, MA 02111, USA
Rolando Ulloa-Gutierrez: Servicio de Infectología, Hospital Nacional de Niños “Dr. Carlos Sáenz Herrera”, Centro de Ciencias Médicas, Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS), San José 10103, Costa Rica
Alfredo Mora-Guevara: Servicio de Gastroenterología y Nutrición, Hospital Nacional de Niños “Dr. Carlos Sáenz Herrera”, Centro de Ciencias Médicas, Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS), San José 10103, Costa Rica

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 13, 1-13

Abstract: Rotavirus is a leading cause of acute diarrhea in children worldwide. Costa Rica recently started universal rotavirus vaccinations for infants with a two-dose schedule in February 2019. We aimed to study the seasonality of rotavirus during the pre-vaccination era. We retrospectively studied a six-year period of hospital admissions due to rotavirus gastroenteritis. We estimated seasonal peak timing and relative intensities using trend-adjusted negative binomial regression models with the δ-method. We assessed the relationship between rotavirus cases and weather characteristics and estimated their effects for the current month, one-month prior and two months prior, by using Pearson correlation coefficients. A total of 798 cases were analyzed. Rotavirus cases predominated in the first five months of the year. On average, the peak of admissions occurred between late-February and early-March. During the seasonal peaks, the monthly count tended to increase 2.5–2.75 times above the seasonal nadir. We found the strongest negative association of monthly hospitalizations and joint percentiles of precipitation and minimal temperature at a lag of two months (R = −0.265, p = 0.027) and we detected correlations of −0.218, −0.223, and −0.226 ( p < 0.05 for all three estimates) between monthly cases and the percentile of precipitation at lags 0, 1, and 2 months. In the warm tropical climate of Costa Rica, the increase in rotavirus hospitalizations coincided with dry and cold weather conditions with a two-month lag. The findings serve as the base for predictive modeling and estimation of the impact of a nation-wide vaccination campaign on pediatric rotaviral infection morbidity.

Keywords: rotavirus; children; acute gastroenteritis; seasonality; epidemiology; meteorology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/13/2321/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/13/2321/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:13:p:2321-:d:244488

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().