title: Space-time airborne disease mapping applied to detect specific behaviour of varicella in Valencia, Spain.
abstract: Airborne diseases are one of humanity's most feared sicknesses and have regularly caused concern among specialists. Varicella is an airborne disease which usually affects children before the age of 10. Because of its nature, varicella gives rise to interesting spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal patterns. This paper studies spatio-temporal exploratory analysis tools to detect specific behaviour of varicella in the city of Valencia, Spain, from 2008 to 2013. These methods have shown a significant association between the spatial and the temporal component, confirmed by the space-time models applied to the data. High relative risk of varicella is observed in economically disadvantaged regions, areas less involved in vaccination programmes.
authors.affiliation: University of Valencia, Spain. Electronic address: iftimi@uv.es.
authors.forename: Adina
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Iftimi
authors.affiliation: University of Valencia, Spain.
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Montes
authors.affiliation: University Hospital Dr. Peset, Valencia, Spain.
authors.forename: Ana Míguez
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Santiyán
authors.affiliation: Statistics Office, Local Council of Valencia, Spain.
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Martínez-Ruiz
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D002644:Chickenpox / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000821:virology; D002648:Child; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005260:Female; D014645:Herpesvirus 3, Human / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D013030:Spain / Q000453:epidemiology; D062211:Spatio-Temporal Analysis; D014611:Vaccination / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
keywords: Airborne disease epidemiology; Spatio-temporal modelling; Varicella zoster virus