Correlation analysis for the attack of bacillary dysentery and meteorological factors based on the Chinese medicine theory of Yunqi and the medical-meteorological forecast model.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the impact of meteorological factors on the outbreak of bacillary dysentery, so as to provide suggestions for disease prevention. METHODS: Based on the Chinese medicine theory of Yunqi, the descriptive statistics, single-factor correlation analysis and back-propagation artificial neural net-work were conducted using data on five basic meteorological factors and data on incidence of bacillary dysentery in Beijing, China, for the period 1970-2004. RESULTS: The incidence of bacillary dysentery showed significant positive correlation relationship with the precipitation, relative humidity, vapor pressure, and temperature, respectively. The incidence of bacillary dysentery showed a negatively correlated relationship with the wind speed and the change trend of average wind speed. The results of medical-meteorological forecast model showed a relatively high accuracy rate. CONCLUSIONS: There is a close relationship between the meteorological factors and the incidence of bacillary dysentery, but the contributions of which to the onset of bacillary dysentery are different to each other.