Climate-based descriptive models of dengue fever: The 2002 epidemic in Colima, Mexico

Dengue is a public health problem on the rise in many tropical regions and affects approximately 100 million people every year worldwide. In this paper, the authors retrospectively assess the association between five climatological variables and dengue incidence using data from the 2002 dengue epidemic in Colima, Mexico. Pluvial precipitation (mm), evaporation (mm), and mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures (°C) were obtained from local meteorological stations. The highest correlation of dengue incidence with maximum temperature was found at a lag of one month, and the highest correlation for evaporation was found at a lag of three months. A multiple-linear-regression model that includes all the climatological variables was correlated with 94 percent of the observed variance. Two simpler linear models with variables significant at the 99 percent confidence level were correlated with 88 percent (Precipitation + Evaporation) and 79 percent (Precipitation + Maximum Temperature) of the observed variance.