ArticleEnvironmental health perspectives2014
Soil dust aerosols and wind as predictors of seasonal meningitis incidence in Niger.
Article in Environmental health perspectives, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 177 citations in OpenAlex.
- Climate and climate-sensitive diseases in semi-arid regions: a systematic review.International journal of public health · 2020Pooled it
- Review
- Trends in Meningitis Burden and Projections to 2040: A Secondary Analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Hypothesis on the dust-borne atmospheric transport of Coccidioides, causative fungal pathogen for coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever).Medical mycology · 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
- Dust and Death: Evidence from the West African Harmattan.Economic journal (London, England) · 2024Article
- Prevalence, aetiology, vaccination coverage and spatio-temporal pattern among patients admitted with acute bacterial meningitis to the sentinel hospital surveillance network in Yemen, 2014-20, before and during the civil war.International journal of epidemiology · 2023Observational
- High-spatial resolution epidemic surveillance of bacterial meningitis in the African meningitis belt in Burkina Faso.Scientific reports · 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
- Article
- Evaluating the Impact of Assimilating Aerosol Optical Depth Observations on Dust Forecasts Over North Africa and the East Atlantic Using Different Data Assimilation Methods.Journal of advances in modeling earth systems · 2020Article
- THE EXPOSOME IN HUMAN EVOLUTION: FROM DUST TO DIESEL.The Quarterly review of biology · 2019Article
- Monitoring the impact of desert dust outbreaks for air quality for health studies.Environment international · 2019Review
- Environmental, economic and socio-cultural risk factors of recurrent seasonal epidemics of cerebrospinal meningitis in Kebbi state, northwestern Nigeria: a qualitative approach.BMC public health · 2018Article
- Compartmental models for seasonal hyperendemic bacterial meningitis in the African meningitis belt.Epidemiology and infection · 2018Article
- Atmospheric Dust, Early Cases, and Localized Meningitis Epidemics in the African Meningitis Belt: An Analysis Using High Spatial Resolution Data.Environmental health perspectives · 2018Article
- Nasopharyngeal Pneumococcal Carriage in Nigeria: a two-site, population-based survey.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- A spatial and temporal analysis of paediatric central nervous system infections from 2005 to 2015 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.Epidemiology and infection · 2017Article
- Climate change and sugarcane expansion increase Hantavirus infection risk.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2017Article
- The burden of seasonal respiratory infections on a national telehealth service in England.Epidemiology and infection · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 7 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEpidemics of meningococcal meningitis are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa during the dry season, a period when the region is affected by the Harmattan, a dry and dusty northeasterly trade wind blowing from the Sahara into the Gulf of Guinea.
objectivesWe examined the potential of climate-based statistical forecasting models to predict seasonal incidence of meningitis in Niger at both the national and district levels. DATA AND
methodsWe used time series of meningitis incidence from 1986 through 2006 for 38 districts in Niger. We tested models based on data that would be readily available in an operational framework, such as climate and dust, population, and the incidence of early cases before the onset of the meningitis season in January-May. Incidence was used as a proxy for immunological state, susceptibility, and carriage in the population. We compared a range of negative binomial generalized linear models fitted to the meningitis data.
resultsAt the national level, a model using early incidence in December and averaged November-December zonal wind provided the best fit (pseudo-R2 = 0.57), with zonal wind having the greatest impact. A model with surface dust concentration as a predictive variable performed indistinguishably well. At the district level, the best spatiotemporal model included zonal wind, dust concentration, early incidence in December, and population density (pseudo-R2 = 0.41).
conclusionsWe showed that wind and dust information and incidence in the early dry season predict part of the year-to-year variability of the seasonal incidence of meningitis at both national and district levels in Niger. Models of this form could provide an early-season alert that wind, dust, and other conditions are potentially conducive to an epidemic.
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