Pathogen seasonality and links with weather in England and Wales: a big data time series analysis

Cherrie, Mark P. C.; Nichols, Gordon; Iacono, Gianni Lo; Sarran, Christophe; Hajat, Shakoor; Fleming, Lora E.

We have systematically examined a large number of human infectious disease pathogens for seasonality, and detailed potential links with weather in England and Wales. This was made possible by utilising time series and clustering algorithms that can detect patterns in the data without supervision. This can lead to greater research efficiency by defining a focus for further investigations. We found that 91 of the most prevalent organisms displayed seasonality, classified into two groups due to their association with 1 month lagged meteorological variables. Within these groups, there were well-known seasonal pathogens such as RSV, Campylobacter and Salmonella, as well as other less studied organisms such as Aeromonas.