Time between the onset and diagnosis of dengue fever and related influencing factors in China / 中华流行病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the time between the onset and diagnosis of Dengue fever and its influencing factors in China.Methods Data were obtained from the Infectious Disease Surveillance System (IDSS).Descriptive analysis was performed for the time interval while nonparametric tests and logistic regression analysis were used to study the related influencing factors.Results Time interval appeared positively skewed with distribution at median of 6 days,quartile range as 4 days,while 57.8％ of them were longer than five days.Data showed that patients with longer intervals among the imported cases,being elderly,cases in non-endemic season and provinces as Fujian,Yunnan and Zhejiang appeared to have had greater influences on the disease.Median of those imported cases was six days,one day longer than locally generated cases,while median of the nonepidemic month was one day more than that of the epidemic month.In Fujian and Yunnan provinces,the medians were 7 days,one day more than that from Guangdong province.The median among young people was 5 days,one day less than that of the patients older than 20 years of age.Conclusion Most Dengue patients did not get diagnosed early enough so it was of urgent need to enhance the sensitivity of the monitoring system,especially in epidemic regions and during non-epidemic season.