Medication Sales and Syndromic Surveillance, France

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Emerg Infect Dis
• Personal Author:
  Vergu, Elisabeta ; Grais, Rebecca F. ; Sarter, Hélène ; Fagot, Jean-Paul ; Lambert, Bruno ; Valleron, Alain-Jacques ; Flahault, Antoine
• Description:
  Although syndromic surveillance systems using nonclinical data have been implemented in the United States, the approach has yet to be tested in France. We present the results of the first model based on drug sales that detects the onset of influenza season and forecasts its trend. Using weekly lagged sales of a selected set of medications, we forecast influenzalike illness (ILI) incidence at the national and regional level for 3 epidemic seasons (2000-01, 2001-02, and 2002-03) and validate the model with real-time updating on the fourth (2003-04). For national forecasts 1-3 weeks ahead, the correlation between observed ILI incidence and forecast was 0.85-0.96, an improvement over the current surveillance method in France. Our findings indicate that drug sales are a useful additional tool to syndromic surveillance, a complementary and independent source of information, and a potential improvement for early warning systems for both epidemic and pandemic planning.
• Subjects:
  • Commerce
  • Disease Outbreaks
  • Drug Prescriptions
  • Humans
  • Influenza, Human
  • Models, Biological
  • Nonprescription Drugs
  • Pharmaceutical Preparations
  • Population Surveillance
  • Seasons
  More +
• Source:
  Emerg Infect Dis. 12(3):416-421.
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  France
• Volume:
  12
• Issue:
  3
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/15932/cdc_15932_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 175.20 KB]
• Collection(s):
  Emerging Infectious Diseases
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:bdc09799fee3aa6a29e9d10928af853c99e8baa4105c842c7ba3cd9dac903d06