Spatial Clustering of Severe Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease Cases in Hainan Island, China.

This study explored spatial clusters of the incidence and proportion of severe HFMD cases in Hainan Island, Where the prevalence and mortality of HFMD were the highest in China in 2011. A spatial autocorrelation statistic (Anselin's Local Moran I) was calculated for the Empirical Bayesian (EB) smoothed dataset of severe HFMD cases. Significantly spatial clusters were detected for both incidence and the proportion of severe HFMD cases. Population density was higher in spatial clusters with a high proportion of severe HFMD cases among total HFMD cases. We speculate that a higher proportion of severe HFMD cases were diagnosed in densely populated townships. This should be considered when analyzing the HFMD database of Hainan. PMID: 28890503 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Japanese Journal of Infectious Diseases - Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Tags: Jpn J Infect Dis Source Type: research