Abstract
A significant seasonal variation in tuberculosis (TB) is observed in north India during 2006–2011, particularly in states like Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. To quantify the seasonal variation, we measure average amplitude (peak to trough distance) across seasons in smear positive cases of TB and observe that it is maximum for Himachal Pradesh (40.01%) and minimum for Maharashtra (3.87%). In north India, smear positive cases peak in second quarter (April–June) and reach a trough in fourth quarter (October–December), however low seasonal variation is observed in southern region of the country. The significant correlations as 0.64 (p-value < 0.001), 0.54 (p-value < 0.01) and 0.42 (p-value < 0.05) are observed between minimum temperature and seasonality of TB at lag-1 in north, central and northeast India respectively. However, in south India, this correlation is not significant.
Article PDF
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
World Health Organization, Global Tuberculosis Report, 2013.
Grassly NC, Fraser C. Seasonal infectious disease epidemiology. Proc R Soci B Biol Sci 2006;273:2541–50.
Fisman DN. Seasonality of infectious diseases. Ann Rev Public Health 2007;28:127–43.
Schaaf HS, Nel ED, Beyers N, Gie RP, Scott F, Donald PR. A decade of experience with Mycobacterium tuberculosis culture from children: a seasonal influence of children tuberculosis. Tuber Lung Dis 1996:43–6.
Douglas AS, Strachan DP, Maxwel JD. Seasonality of tuberculosis: the reverse of other respiratory diseases in the UK. Thorax 1996;51:944–6.
Leung CC, Yew WW, Chan TYK, Tam CM, Chan CY, Chan CK, Tang N, Chang KC, Law WS. Seasonal pattern of tuberculosis in Hong Kong. Int J Epidemiol 2005;34:924–30.
Rios M, Garcia JM, Sanchez JA, Perez D. A statistical analysis of the seasonality in pulmonary tuberculosis. Eur J Epidemiol 2000;16:483–8.
Nagayama N, Ohmori M. Seasonality in various forms of tuberculosis. Int J Tuberc Lung Dis 2006;10:1117–22.
Mabaera B, Naranbat N, Katamba A, Laticevschi D, Lauritsen JM, Rieder HL. Seasonal variation among tuberculosis suspects in four countries. Int Health 2009;1:53–6.
Akhtar S, Mohammad GHH, Mohammad Hameed GHH. Seasonality in pulmonary tuberculosis among migrant workers entering Kuwait. BMC Infect Dis 2008;8. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-8-3.
Cao S, Wang F, Tam W, Tse LA, Kim JH, Liu J, Lu Z. A hybrid seasonal prediction model for tuberculosis incidence in China. BMC Med Inf Decis Making 2013;13.
Li XX, Wang LX, Zhang H, Du X, Jiang SW. Seasonal variations in notification of active tuberculosis cases in China, 2005–2012. PLoS ONE 2013;8(7). ArticleIDe68102.
Willis MD, Winston CA, Heilig CM, Cain KP, Walter ND, Kenzie WRM. Seasonality of tuberculosis in United States, 1993–2008. Clin Infect Dis 2012;54:1553–60.
Thorpe LE, Frieden TR, Laserson KF, Wells C, Khatri GR. Seasonality of tuberculosis in India: is it real and what does it tell us? Lancet 2004;364:1613–4.
Kumar V, Singh A, Adhikary M, Daral S, Khokhar A, Singh S. Seasonality of tuberculosis in Delhi, India: a time series analysis. Tuberc Res Treat 2014. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/514093.
Liu L, Zaho XQ, Zhou Y. A tuberculosis model with seasonality. Bull Math Biol 2010;72:931–52.
Bowong S, Kurths J. Modeling and analysis of the transmission dynamics of tuberculosis without and with seasonality. Nonlinear Dyn 2012;67:2027–51.
Christiansen CF, Pedersen L, Sørensen HT, Rothman KJ. Methods to assess seasonal effects in epidemiological studies of infectious diseases-exemplified by application to the occurrence of meningococcal disease. Clin Microbiol Infect 2012;18:963–9.
Christensen SL, Dethlefsen C, Rasmussen AG, Fischer T, Schønheyder HC, Rothman KJ, Sørensen HT. Examining secular trends and seasonality in count data using dynamic generalized linear modelling: a new methodological approach illustrated with hospital discharge data on myocardial infarction. Eur J Epidemiol 2009;24(5):225–30.
Brookhart MA, Rothman KJ. Simple estimators of the intensity of seasonal occurrence. BMC Med Res Methodol 2008;8(67). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-8-67.
Christensen AL, Christensen SL, Dethlefsen C. Poisson regression models outperform the geometrical model in estimating the peak-to-trough ratio of seasonal variation: a simulation study. Comput Methods Programs Biomed 2011;104(3):333–40.
TB India. RNTCP Annual Status Report (2006–2013).
Historical Weather, <http://www.wunderground.com/history/>, last accessed on 20/11/14.
Fares A. Seasonality of tuberculosis. J Global Infect Dis 2011;3(1):46–55.
Satyanarayana S, Nair SA, Chadha SS, Shivashankar R, Sharma G, Yadav S, et al. From where are tuberculosis patients accessing treatment in India? Results from a cross-sectional community based survey of 30 districts. PLoS ONE 2011;6(9). Article ID e24160.
Liao CM, Hsieh NH, Huang TL, Cheng YH, Lin YJ, Chio CP, et al. Assessing trends and predictors of tuberculosis in Taiwan. BMC Public Health 2012;12(29). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-29.
R Development Core Team. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R foundation for statistical computing. Vienna. Austria. 2012;ISBN3-900051-07-0, http://www.R-project.org, last accessed: 20/11/14.
Christensen AL. Peak2Trough: Estimation of the peak-to-trough ratio of a seasonal variation component. 2012. R package version 1.3.
Maxwell JD. Seasonal variation in vitamin D. Proc Nutr Soc 1994;53(3):533–43.
Wilkinson RJ, Llewelyn M, Toossi Z, Patel P, Pasvol G, Lalvani A, et al. Influence of vitamin D deficiency and vitamin D receptor polymorphisms on tuberculosis among Gujarati Asians in west London: a case–control study. Lancet 2000;355(9204):618–21.
Douglas AS, Ali S, Bakhshi SS. Does vitamin D deficiency account for ethnic differences in tuberculosis seasonality in the UK? Ethn Health 1998;3(4):247–53.
Koh GCKW, Hawthorne G, Turner AM, Kunst H, Dedicoat M. Tuberculosis incidence correlates with sunshine: an ecological 28-year time series study. PLoS ONE 2013;8(3):e57752. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057752.
Naranbat N, Nymadawa P, Schopfer K, Rieder HL. Seasonality of tuberculosis in an Eastern-Asian country with an extreme continental climate. Eur Respir J 2009;34(4):921–5.
Solar Radiation Hand Book, Solar Energy Centre. MNRE & Indian Metrological Department.2008; http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/srd-sec.pdf, last accessed: 20/11/14.
Sahu M, Bhatia V, Aggarwal A, Rawat V, Saxena P, Pandey A, Das V. Vitamin D deficiency in rural girls and pregnant women despite abundant sunshine in northern India. Clin Endocrinol 2009;70(5):680–4.
Corbett EL, Bandason T, Duong T, Dauya E, Makamure B, Churchyard GJ, et al. Comparison of two active case-finding strategies for community-based diagnosis of symptomatic smear-positive tuberculosis and control of infectious tuberculosis in Harare, Zimbabwe (DETECTB): acluster-randomised trial. Lancet 2010;376(9748): 1244–53.
Strachan DP, Powell KJ, Thaker A, Millard FJC, Maxwell JD. Vegetarian diet as a risk factor for tuberculosis in immigrant south London Asians. Thorax 1995;50(2): 175–80.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
About this article
Cite this article
Narula, P., Sihota, P., Azad, S. et al. Analyzing seasonality of tuberculosis across Indian states and union territories. J Epidemiol Glob Health 5, 337–346 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jegh.2015.02.004
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jegh.2015.02.004