Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Guo, Fang
• Zhang, Pei
• Do, Vivian
• Runge, Jakob
• Zhang, Kun
• Han, Zheshen
• Deng, Shenxi
• Lin, Hongli
• Ali, Sheikh Taslim
• Chen, Ruchong
• Guo, Yuming
• Tian, Linwei

Titel

Ozone as an environmental driver of influenza

Ist Teil von

• Nature communications, 2024-05, Vol.15 (1), p.3763-3763, Article 3763

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Under long-standing threat of seasonal influenza outbreaks, it remains imperative to understand the drivers of influenza dynamics which can guide mitigation measures. While the role of absolute humidity and temperature is extensively studied, the possibility of ambient ozone (O 3 ) as an environmental driver of influenza has received scant attention. Here, using state-level data in the USA during 2010–2015, we examined such research hypothesis. For rigorous causal inference by evidence triangulation, we applied 3 distinct methods for data analysis: Convergent Cross Mapping from state-space reconstruction theory, Peter-Clark-momentary-conditional-independence plus as graphical modeling algorithms, and regression-based Generalised Linear Model. The negative impact of ambient O 3 on influenza activity at 1-week lag is consistently demonstrated by those 3 methods. With O 3 commonly known as air pollutant, the novel findings here on the inhibition effect of O 3 on influenza activity warrant further investigations to inform environmental management and public health protection. Temperature and absolute humidity are associated with influenza activity, and recent data from Hong Kong have suggested ozone as an additional environmental driver. Here, the authors investigate the relationship between ozone and influenza transmission using surveillance data from the USA and find evidence for an inhibitory effect.