@article{e9827f3e2814493e874f37aad93c36de,
title = "Travelling waves in the occurrence of dengue haemorrhagic fever in Thailand",
abstract = "Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne virus that infects 50-100 million people each year. Of these infections, 200,000-500,000 occur as the severe, life-threatening form of the disease, dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF). Large, unanticipated epidemics of DHF often overwhelm health systems. An understanding of the spatial-temporal pattern of DHF incidence would aid the allocation of resources to combat these epidemics. Here we examine the spatial-temporal dynamics of DHF incidence in a data set describing 850,000 infections occurring in 72 provinces of Thailand during the period 1983 to 1997. We use the method of empirical mode decomposition to show the existence of a spatial-temporal travelling wave in the incidence of DHF. We observe this wave in a three-year periodic component of variance, which is thought to reflect host-pathogen population dynamics. The wave emanates from Bangkok, the largest city in Thailand, moving radially at a speed of 148km per month. This finding provides an important starting point for detecting and characterizing the key processes that contribute to the spatial-temporal dynamics of DHF in Thailand.",
author = "Cummings, {Derek A.T.} and Irizarry, {Rafael A.} and Huang, {Norden E.} and Endy, {Timothy P.} and Ananda Nisalak and Kumnuan Ungchusak and Burke, {Donald S.}",
note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgements We thank O. Bjornstad for making R code available.This work was supported by grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration{\textquoteright}s Joint Program on Climate Variability and Human Health (a consortium including the EPA, NASA, NSF and EPRI), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Funding Information: Acknowledgements We thank Banham Poultry Ltd, Dove Valley (Ashbourne) Ltd, Faccenda Group (including Webb Country Food Group), Grampian Country Chicken, L&M Food Group, Moy Park Ltd, O{\textquoteright}Kane Poultry Ltd, G. W. Padley Poultry Ltd, Rose Brand Poultry (including Skovsgaard) and Two Sisters Ltd (including Premier Farming) for participation; and P. Harvey for comments on the manuscript. We thank Defra for funding. M.S.D. conceived the project, made links with the companies, obtained funding, designed the protocols, ran the first trial, took part in about 25% of subsequent trials and largely wrote the paper. C.A.D. advised on the experimental design and undertook much of the statistical analysis. T.A.J. took over the running of the project from trial 2, collected and collated data from all subsequent trials, did the preliminary statistical analysis and collaborated in writing the paper.",
year = "2004",
month = jan,
day = "22",
doi = "10.1038/nature02225",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "427",
pages = "344--347",
journal = "Nature",
issn = "0028-0836",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "6972",
}