Analysis of spatial mobility in subjects from a Dengue endemic urban locality in Morelos State, Mexico

Abstract

IntroductionMathematical models and field data suggest that human mobility is an important driver for Dengue virus transmission. Nonetheless little is known on this matter due the lack of instruments for precise mobility quantification and study design difficulties.Materials and methodsWe carried out a cohort-nested, case-control study with 126 individuals (42 cases, 42 intradomestic controls and 42 population controls) with the goal of describing human mobility patterns of recently Dengue virus-infected subjects, and comparing them with those of non-infected subjects living in an urban endemic locality. Mobility was quantified using a GPS-data logger registering waypoints at 60-second intervals for a minimum of 15 natural days.ResultsAlthough absolute displacement was highly biased towards the intradomestic and peridomestic areas, occasional displacements exceeding a 100-Km radius from the center of the studied locality were recorded for all three study groups and individual displacements were recorded traveling across six states from central Mexico. Additionally, cases had a larger number of visits out of the municipality´s administrative limits when compared to intradomestic controls (cases: 10.4 versus intradomestic controls: 2.9, p = 0.0282). We were able to identify extradomestic places within and out of the locality that were independently visited by apparently non-related infected subjects, consistent with houses, working and leisure places.ConclusionsResults of this study show that human mobility in a small urban setting exceeded that considered by local health authority’s administrative limits, and was different between recently infected and non-infected subjects living in the same household. These observations provide important insights about the role that human mobility may have in Dengue virus transmission and persistence across endemic geographic areas that need to be taken into account when planning preventive and control measures. Finally, these results are a valuable reference when setting the parameters for future mathematical modeling studies.

Detection of Transovarial Transmission on Aedes sp. in Gombong Kebumen Central Java

“…Several studies have linked population mobility as an important factor in the pattern of dengue transmission. 20,21 Dynamic population mobility has a stronger effect on the spread of dengue infection compared to its vector mobility, Aedes sp.. 22 This is possible because of the limited flight distance of Aedes sp. mosquitoes (no more than 500 m. 23 Therefore, the spread of dengue is mostly clustered because of the limited flight distance of mosquitoes.…”

Análisis de la movilidad espacial de la población asociada a huracanes a partir de la sombra digital geoespacial derivada de Twitter

“…Por ejemplo, Vazquez-Prokopec et al (2009) investigaron la posibilidad de conocer y cuantificar los movimientos de la población y su relación con la transmisión del virus del dengue en entornos urbanos tropicales mediante la utilización de dispositivos GPS. Otros muchos estudios han seguido este camino y han dotado de sensores GPS a distintas poblaciones para relacionar movilidad y transmisión de enfermedades infecciosas (Stanton et al, 2017;Falcón-Lezama et al, 2017). Otras disciplinas que han aprovechado estas tecnologías han sido el turismo (Shoval et al, 2011) o los estudios de transporte (Wang et al, 2015).…”

Regional reinfection by Dengue: a network approach using data from Mexico

“…Dengue is a mandatory notifiable disease in Mexico but only diagnosed cases are reported so we can expect our data to be biased by un-notified asymptomatic cases, underreporting and misreported (a certain amount of cases that are not related to Dengue but to some other diseases with similar symptoms). There is evidence in the Dengue literature [13], [42], that movement is a key factor for understanding epidemic episodes and large outbreaks that occur along the years. Here we analyze data corresponding to towns located in four states in the Federal Republic of Mexico: Veracruz, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas.…”