The Association between Ambient Temperature and Acute Diarrhea Incidence in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan

Chien-Chou Chen, Bo-Cheng Lin, Liwei Yap, Po-Huang Chiang and Ta-Chien Chan
Additional contact information
Chien-Chou Chen: Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan
Bo-Cheng Lin: Department of Real Estate and Built Environment, National Taipei University, San Shia District, New Taipei City 237, Taiwan
Liwei Yap: Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan
Po-Huang Chiang: Institute of Population Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes, Zhunan 350, Taiwan
Ta-Chien Chan: Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 5, 1-9

Abstract: While studies have examined the association between weather variables and acute diarrhea in a city, region, or country, less evidence is available on the temperature effect across countries. The objective of this study is to elucidate the nonlinear and lagged association between ambient temperature and acute diarrhea in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. We collected weekly surveillance statistics on acute diarrhea with the corresponding meteorological data from 12 regions of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan during 2012–2016. Firstly, we fitted the region-specific counts of acute diarrhea in a distributed lag nonlinear model (DLNM) which accounts for the non-linearity and lagged effect of temperature. Secondly, we applied meta-analysis to pool estimates across 12 regions. A total of 5,992,082 acute diarrhea cases were identified. We found that (1) the pooled overall cumulative relationship between the relative risk (RR) of acute diarrhea and temperature was the greatest (RR = 1.216; 95% CI: 1.083, 1.364) at 11 °C; (2) a pooled predictor-specific summary association at lower temperatures (12 °C or 25th percentile) began immediately and vanished after four weeks. Predictions and error analysis for new onsets of acute diarrhea in 2017 were evaluated. An early warning system based on the information of temperature variation was suggested for acute diarrhea control management.

Keywords: acute diarrhea; temperature; distributed lag nonlinear model (DLNM); prediction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/5/1417/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/5/1417/ (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:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:5:p:1417-:d:144410

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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