Analytical studies assessing the association between extreme precipitation or temperature and drinking water-related waterborne infections: a review

Guzman Herrador, Bernardo R; de Blasio, Birgitte Freiesleben; MacDonald, Emily; Nichols, Gordon; Sudre, Bertrand; Vold, Line; Semenza, Jan C; Nygård, Karin

doi:10.1186/s12940-015-0014-y

Environmental Health

Table 4 Region, objective, exposure variables and data sources, analytical method, results and conclusions in the included articles by type of study unit

From: Analytical studies assessing the association between extreme precipitation or temperature and drinking water-related waterborne infections: a review

Study units	First author publication year	Objective	Exposure variable under study (Precipitation/Air temperature)	Exposure variable data source	Analytical method	Additional information	Association found
Outbreaks	Yang [12]; 2012	Risk factors associated with spatio-temporal distributions of water-associated outbreaks	Average precipitation per year	Records from international organizations	Zero-inflated Poisson regression	-	Waterborne diseases are inversely related to average annual precipitation.
			Global average accumulated temperature (degree-days)
			Global average accumulated temperature (degree-days)				No association between temperature and waterborne disease.
	Curriero [14]; 2001	Association between extreme precipitation and waterborne disease outbreaks.	Extreme precipitation above certain threshold by watershed	Readings of relevant weather stations	Monte Carlo version of the Fisher exact test	Analysis stratified by water source and control for seasonality	Positive association between extreme precipitation and outbreak occurrence
	Curriero [14]; 2001		Extreme precipitation above certain threshold by watershed	Readings of relevant weather stations	Monte Carlo version of the Fisher exact test		Both for surface water (strongest association during the month of the outbreak) and groundwater contamination (2-month prior to the outbreaks)
	Thomas [11]; 2006	Test the association between high impact weather event and waterborne disease outbreaks	Accumulated precipitation, smoothed using a five-day moving average, maximum percentile of the accumulated precipitation amount, number of days between the maximum percentile and the case or control onset day temperature	Readings of relevant weather stations	Time-stratified matched case-crossover analysis	Control for seasonality	Positive association between accumulated precipitation percentile and outbreak occurrence
							Positive association between degree-days above 0 C and outbreak occurrence
			Degree-days above 0 C, the maximum temperature smoothed using a five-day moving average, and the number of days between max temp and the case and the control onset day
	Nichols [13]; 2009	Association between precipitation and outbreaks of drinking water related disease.	Cumulative precipitation in four time periods prior to each outbreak	Readings of relevant weather stations	Time-stratified matched case-crossover analysis	Water source, season, water supply considered as effect modifiers	Positive association with excess precipitation over the previous week and low precipitation in the three weeks before the week of the outbreak.
			Excessive precipitation: total number of days in which the precipitation exceeded a certain upper limit
							Greater risk in groundwater, spring and private water supplies. These interactions were non-significant when including them together in a model, suggesting confounding.
Cases of infection	Tornevi [22]; 2013	Determine if variation in the incidence of acute gastrointestinal illnesses is associated with upstream precipitation	Daily precipitation	Readings of relevant weather stations	Poisson regression (with nonlinear distributed lag function)	Control for seasonality	Heavy precipitation was associated with increased calls.
	Louis [18]; 2005	Investigate the relationship between environmental conditions and Campylobacter infections	Precipitation divided into three categories up and down a certain threshold	Readings of relevant weather stations	Time series analysis	Seasonality and water supply also included in the study	Campylobacter rates were correlated with temperature
					Linear regression		Campylobacter rates were correlated with temperature
							No association with precipitation
							No association with surface water.
			Daily max and minimum temperature				No association with surface water.
	Eisenberg [15]; 2013	Examine the relationship between cholera and precipitation in Haiti including statistical and dynamic models	Cumulative daily totals for precipitation	Rain gauges and satellite measurements	Statistical modeling	Control for seasonality	All analysis support a strong positive association between precipitation and cholera incidence in Haiti
					Quasi-Poisson regression (with nonlinear distributed lag function)
					Granger Causality Wald Test
					Case-crossover analysis
					Dynamic modeling
	White [25]; 2009	Association between environmental factors and campylobacter infection	Precipitation	Readings of relevant weather stations	Poisson regression	Control for seasonality	Weekly incidence was associated with increasing mean temperature.
			Temperature		Poisson regression
					Time-stratified matched case-crossover analysis
					Time-stratified matched case-crossover analysis		No association with precipitation
	Drayna [26]; 2010	Association between precipitation and acute gastrointestinal illness in pediatric population	Total daily precipitation, extreme considered above a certain percentile	Readings of relevant weather stations	Autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model	Control for seasonality	Positive association between precipitation and daily visits
	Teschke [21]; 2010	Association between the incidence of intestinal infections and environmental factors	Precipitation categories according accumulated millimeters of rain over certain periods	Readings of relevant weather stations	Logistic regression	Season, water supply, water source, disinfection and well depth included as variables	The association between incidence of disease and precipitation did not remain when controlling for other variables
							Water chlorination was associated with reduced physician visits
							Two water systems with the highest proportion of surface water had increased incidence
							Private well water and well depth were not associated with increased risk
	Harper; [16]; 2011	Association between weather variables and gastrointestinal-related clinic visits	Total daily precipitation	Readings of relevant weather stations	Zero-inflated Poisson regression	Control for seasonality	Positive associations were observed between high levels of water volume input (precipitation + snowmelt) and IGI clinic visits.
			Daily average temperature
			Daily average temperature				No association with temperature
	Hashizume [27]; 2007	Impact of precipitation and temperature on the number of non-cholera diarrhea cases	Daily Precipitation, weekly means Above/below certain threshold	Records from national level	Poisson regression	Control for seasonality	Non-cholera diarrhea cases increased both above and below a threshold level with high and low precipitation in the preceding weeks. Cases also increased with higher temperature.
	Hashizume [27]; 2007		Daily minimum/maximum temperature, weekly means	Records from national level	Poisson regression	Control for seasonality
	Vollaard [23]; 2004	Determine risk factors for typhoid and paratyphoid fever in an endemic area	Precipitation	Interviews with the participants	Logistic regression	-	Flooding was associated with the occurrence of paratyphoid fever. Flooding was not associated with typhoid fever.
	Vollaard [23]; 2004		Flooding: defined as inundation of the house of a participant in the 12 months preceding the investigation	Interviews with the participants	Logistic regression	-
	Kelly-Hope [33]; 2007	Environmental risk factors of cholera, shigellosis and typhoid fever infections	Precipitation	Worldwide maps generated by the interpolation of information from ground-based weather stations	Linear regression	Type of water supply	Shigellosis and cholera were positively associated with precipitation
			Temperature
							Typhoid fever was not associated with precipitation
							No association with temperature
	Emch [31]; 2008	Association between cholera and the local environment	Monthly precipitation	Readings of relevant weather stations	Ordered probit model to analyze ordinal outcome (Bangladesh). Probit model for dichotomous outcome. (Vietnam).	-	Temperature and precipitation not associated with cholera
	Emch [31]; 2008	Association between cholera and the local environment	Monthly temperature	Readings of relevant weather stations		-	Temperature and precipitation not associated with cholera
	Constantin de Magny [30]; 2008	Association of environmental signatures with cholera epidemics	Monthly precipitation	Merged satellite/gauge estimates	Quasi Poisson regression	Control for seasonality	Positive association between cholera and increased precipitation in Kolkata.
	Constantin de Magny [30]; 2008		Monthly precipitation	Merged satellite/gauge estimates	Quasi Poisson regression	Control for seasonality	No association cholera and increased precipitation in Matlab
	Wang [24]; 2012	Impact of meteorological variations on para/typhoid fever (PTF)	Monthly cumulative precipitation	Records from national level	-Spearman’s rank correlation analysis to analyze the association between the infection incidence and the weather variables	-	Temperature and precipitation were positively associated with the monthly incidence of PTF
			Monthly cumulative precipitation		Wavelet analysis and wavelet coherence to detect the variation of periodicity over time
			Monthly average temperature
	Chen [29]; 2012	Association between precipitation and distribution patterns of various infectious diseases, including water-borne	Precipitation coded as: regular, torrential and extreme torrential	Readings of relevant weather stations	Poisson regression (with GAM and GAMM)	Control for seasonality using monthly indicator	Daily extreme precipitation levels correlated with the infections
	Jutla, [32]; 2013	Seek an understanding between hydro-climatological processes and cholera in epidemic regions	Precipitation and temperature above/below average during the previous months	Reports from the government	Spearman’s rank correlation analysis	-	India. -Odds of cholera occurring were significantly higher when the temperature was above climatological average over the previous two months. Odds of cholera outbreak was higher when above average precipitation occurs.
				satellite sensors
			Daily precipitation and temperature
			Daily precipitation and temperature				Haiti: Strong correlation between precipitation and cholera cases.
	Singh [20]; 2001	Association between climate variability and incidence of diarrhea	Precipitation : dichotomous variable above/below certain threshold	Gridded data from international institute	Linear regression Poisson	Control for seasonality	Positive association between annual average temperature and rates of diarrhea
							Extremes of precipitation were independently associated with increased reports of diarrhea
			Annual average temperature
			Annual average temperature		regression
	Hu [17]; 2007	Impact of weather variability on the transmission of cryptosporidiosis.	Monthly total precipitation	Records from national level	Poisson regression	Control for seasonality	Association between cryptosporidiosis and monthly maximum. temperature
			Monthly total precipitation		Seasonal auto-regression integrated moving average (SARIMA)
		Explore the difference in the predictive ability between Poisson regression and SARIMA models	Monthly mean minimum/maximum temperature		Seasonal auto-regression integrated moving average (SARIMA)
	Rind [34]; 2010	Association between climate factors and local differences in campylobacteriosis rates	Monthly mean maximum total precipitation	Records from research center	Linear regression	Water supply, seasonality	No association found between temperature and precipitation and campylobacteriosis rates
	Rind [34]; 2010		Monthly mean maximum daily temperatures	Records from research center	Linear regression	Water supply, seasonality
	Britton [28]; 2010	Association between precipitation and ambient temperature and notifications of cryptosporidiosis and giardiasis	Average annual precipitation to evaporation ratio	Mathematical surfaces fitted to long run average climate station data	Negative binomial regression	Water supply	Giardiasis: positive association between precipitation and temperature.
			Average annual precipitation to evaporation ratio				Cryptosporidiosis: positive association with precipitation and negative association with temperature. The effect of precipitation was modified by the quality of the domestic water supply
			Average annual temperature
	Sasaki [19]; 2009	Association between precipitation patterns and cholera outbreaks.	Daily precipitation data	Records from national level and readings of relevant weather stations	Spearman rank correlation analysis		Increased precipitation was associated with the occurrence of cholera outbreaks

Literature Review (n = 24).

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ISSN: 1476-069X

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