Positive association of supersaturation effects in the human airways with influenza activity in subtropical climate: influenza seasons in Okinawa (2007-2012) – New method for analyzing and forecasting (first preliminary results)
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Epidemiology, Global Health, Health Policy, Public Health, Statistics
- Keywords
- Condensational growth, Seasonality, Forecasting, Influenza, Supersaturation
- Copyright
- © 2017 Ishmatov
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Positive association of supersaturation effects in the human airways with influenza activity in subtropical climate: influenza seasons in Okinawa (2007-2012) – New method for analyzing and forecasting (first preliminary results) PeerJ Preprints 5:e3132v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3132v1
Abstract
There are many theories of the seasonality of influenza for different climatic zones. But none of the known theories provides a clear explanation, especially for the tropical and subtropical climate.
Here we have originally analyzed the association/connection of activity of seasonal influenza in Okinawa (subtropical zone) with the probability of occurring of supersaturation in the human airways when inhaling environmental air under specific weather conditions.
We have shown for the first time that the effects of supersaturation in the human airways may be associated with main representative peaks of intensity/activity of influenza in Okinawa in the period of observation from Jan 2007 until Dec 2012 including 2009 pandemic.
Our observation is the first one which clearly shows in the practice that the effect of supersaturation in the airways can be used for understanding and forecast the influenza activity in subtropical and tropical zones. Because the effect of supersaturation may lead to an additional risk of acidification of epithelial lining fluid in the local areas of the respiratory tract and to additional risk of deposition of infectious agents from inhaled air in the upper airways.
Author Comment
The present study is the first research of this kind in which it is shown that the effect of supersaturation in the airways can be used for the analysis and predicting the outbreaks of influenza in subtropical climate. Results of the study are simplified. But even in this form, these results had shown for the first time that there is a clear association/connection between the supersaturation effects in the airways with influenza activity in all period in Okinawa (from Jan 2007 until Dec 2012). It is the first observation of this type for subtropical climate. No one before looked at the problem of seasonal influenza and pandemics in the tropical/subtropical zones from this point of view.