ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2013
Seasonality of meningitis in Africa and climate forcing: aerosols stand out.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Climate and climate-sensitive diseases in semi-arid regions: a systematic review.International journal of public health · 2020Pooled it
- Review
- Modeling the transmission dynamics of endemic meningitis: stability analysis and long-term persistence.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Disease burden of Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis meningitis in children and adolescents: A population-based study.Medicine · 2026Article
- Hypothesis on the dust-borne atmospheric transport of Coccidioides, causative fungal pathogen for coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever).Medical mycology · 2026Article
- Estimating the impact of decreasing vaccination response times for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in low- and middle-income countries.BMC global and public health · 2026Article
- Desert Sand and Dust Storms and Desert Dust Episodes: Major Patterns to be Accounted for to Protect the Health of Exposed Population: A Review.ACS ES&T air · 2025Review
- ModelingInfectious Disease Modelling · 2025Article
- Neurological and mental health in the era of climate change: mechanisms, clinical impacts, and adaptation.Frontiers in public health · 2025Review
- New title: Re-evaluating environmental associations with meningitis risk across Africa.Wellcome open research · 2025Article
- Climate change and health in the Sahel: a systematic review.Royal Society open science · 2024Review
- Assessing ventilation through ambient carbon dioxide concentrations across multiple healthcare levels in Ghana.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Inference of transmission dynamics and retrospective forecast of invasive meningococcal disease.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Impacts of Climate Change and Air Pollution on Neurologic Health, Disease, and Practice: A Scoping Review.Neurology · 2023Article
- Association between Meningococcal Meningitis and Santa Ana Winds in Children and Adolescents from Tijuana, Mexico: A Need for Vaccination.Tropical medicine and infectious disease · 2023Article
- Temporal Relationships Between Saharan Dust Proxies, Climate, and Meningitis in Senegal.GeoHealth · 2023Article
- Improved sub-seasonal forecasts to support preparedness action for meningitis outbreak in Africa.Climate services · 2022Article
- High-spatial resolution epidemic surveillance of bacterial meningitis in the African meningitis belt in Burkina Faso.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Climate change and emergency care in Africa: A scoping review.African journal of emergency medicine : Revue africaine de la medecine d'urgence · 2022Article
- An overview of bacterial meningitis epidemics in Africa from 1928 to 2018 with a focus on epidemics "outside-the-belt".BMC infectious diseases · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bacterial meningitis is an ongoing threat for the population of the African Meningitis Belt, a region characterized by the highest incidence rates worldwide. The determinants of the disease dynamics are still poorly understood; nevertheless, it is often advocated that climate and mineral dust have a large impact. Over the last decade, several studies have investigated this relationship at a large scale. In this analysis, we scaled down to the district-level weekly scale (which is used for in-year response to emerging epidemics), and used wavelet and phase analysis methods to define and compare the time-varying periodicities of meningitis, climate and dust in Niger. We mostly focused on detecting time-lags between the signals that were consistent across districts. Results highlighted the special case of dust in comparison to wind, humidity or temperature: a strong similarity between districts is noticed in the evolution of the time-lags between the seasonal component of dust and meningitis. This result, together with the assumption of dust damaging the pharyngeal mucosa and easing bacterial invasion, reinforces our confidence in dust forcing on meningitis seasonality. Dust data should now be integrated in epidemiological and forecasting models to make them more realistic and usable in a public health perspective.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.