ArticleScience (New York, N.Y.)2018
Urbanization and humidity shape the intensity of influenza epidemics in U.S. cities.
Article in Science (New York, N.Y.), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 173 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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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.
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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
173 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The influence of weather and urban environment characteristics on upper respiratory tract infections: a systematic review.Frontiers in public health · 2025Pooled it
- Regional-based within-year seasonal variations in influenza-related health outcomes across mainland China: a systematic review and spatio-temporal analysis.BMC medicine · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Resurgence of large-scale influenza A (H1N1) outbreaks: Modeling the interplay of transmission, loss of immunity, and vaccination.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2027Article
- Climate-Aware Self-Retrospective Representation Learning for Spatio-Temporal Epidemic Forecasting.Tropical medicine and infectious disease · 2026Article
- Multi-source machine learning for short-term influenza forecasting in Hunan Province, China: a spatiotemporal analysis using surveillance, search, meteorological and air-quality data.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Assessing spatial transmission risk of respiratory infectious diseases across cities of different socioeconomic tiers in China: A modelling study.PLoS medicine · 2026Article
- Local Influenza Forecasts Outperform State-Level Forecasts in the United States.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Unified climate factors predict influenza outbreak seasonality across tropical and temperate regions.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Heat effects on influenza-like illness and heterogeneity factors across regions: based on 333 cities in China.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Noisy periodicity in tropical respiratory disease dynamics.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Childhood immune imprinting shapes cohort and period influenza mortality.Science advances · 2026Article
- XIS-humidity: a daily spatiotemporal machine-learning model for dew point in the contiguous United States.Environmental research communications · 2026Article
- Toward AI foundation models for epidemics: Promise, challenges, and paths forward.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Real-time digital prescriptions unlock influenza dynamics: evidence from 21 million transactions.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- Understanding spatiotemporal clustering of seasonal influenza in the United States.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Article
- Modeling the dynamics of seasonal influenza in response to meteorological conditions and antigenic variation: a simulation study.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Article
- Machine Learning Optimization Algorithms for Clustering Regions and Emergency Management: A Review.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2026Review
113 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Influenza epidemics vary in intensity from year to year, driven by climatic conditions and by viral antigenic evolution. However, important spatial variation remains unexplained. Here we show predictable differences in influenza incidence among cities, driven by population size and structure. Weekly incidence data from 603 cities in the United States reveal that epidemics in smaller cities are focused on shorter periods of the influenza season, whereas in larger cities, incidence is more diffuse. Base transmission potential estimated from city-level incidence data is positively correlated with population size and with spatiotemporal organization in population density, indicating a milder response to climate forcing in metropolises. This suggests that urban centers incubate critical chains of transmission outside of peak climatic conditions, altering the spatiotemporal geometry of herd immunity.
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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.