Wide-area epidemics of influenza and pediatric diseases from infectious disease surveillance in Japan, 1999-2005.
BACKGROUND
Epidemics of infectious diseases usually start in small areas and subsequently become widespread widely. Although a method for detecting epidemics in public health center (PHC) areas has been proposed and used in the National Epidemiological Surveillance of Infectious Diseases in Japan, wide-area epidemics have not been fully investigated.


METHODS
Using the abovementioned method, we defined an epidemic as that occurring for a week in at least one PHC area in a prefecture and a wide-area epidemic as that when the number of people living in epidemic PHC areas exceeds 30% of the prefectural population. The number of weeks of an epidemic or wide-area epidemic for influenza and 11 pediatric diseases was observed in 47 prefectures in Japan from 1999 through 2005.


RESULTS
Epidemics and wide-area epidemics of influenza occurred for an average of 7.0 and 4.3 weeks in a year in a prefecture, respectively. The proportion of wide-area epidemics in epidemic weeks was 62%. The average number of wide-area epidemic weeks for pediatric diseases varied among diseases; it was more than 4 weeks for infectious gastroenteritis and herpangina and less than 1 week for pertussis, rubella, and measles. The proportion of wide-area epidemics in epidemic weeks was 28-41% for infectious gastroenteritis, hand-foot-mouth disease, and herpangina and less than 20% for other diseases.


CONCLUSIONS
The frequency of wide-area epidemics of influenza and pediatric diseases in various prefectures was observed. Epidemics of infectious diseases such as influenza and herpangina occurring in small areas were likely to spread to wide areas.
Murakami
Yoshitaka
Y
Department of Health Science, Shiga University of Medical Science, Seta Tsuikinowa-cho, Otsu City, Shiga 520-2192, Japan. ymura@belle.shiga-med.ac.jp
Hashimoto
Shuji
S
Ohta
Akiko
A
Kawado
Miyuki
M
Izumida
Michiko
M
Tada
Yuki
Y
Shigematsu
Mika
M
Yasui
Yoshinori
Y
Taniguchi
Kiyosu
K
Nagai
Masaki
M
D002648:Child; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D006801:Humans; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000453:epidemiology*; D007564:Japan / Q000453:epidemiology; D010372:Pediatrics; D018571:Sentinel Surveillance; D014777:Virus Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology*