Abstract

Objective: To find correlations between climate variations (temperature, rainfall, humidity, and wind speed) and the prevalence of rotavirus diarrhea, particularly evinced by hospital admission. Methods: Stool specimens were obtained from under five-year-old children suffering from acute diarrhea at the Dr. Hasan Sadikin General Hospital over the period from April 2009 to December 2012. Stool specimens were obtained from the sick children within 24 h of their hospital admission. Weather information was obtained monthly. Results: From 945 stool specimens, rotavirus was positively identified in 427 (45.2%) of them. Correlation of rotavirus diarrhea prevalence to temperature, rainfall, humidity, and wind speed were amounted to r = -0.427, r = 0.101, r = 0.536 and r = -0.069, respectively. No significant correlation could be determined to link the prevalence of rotavirus to either the dry and the wet season (P = 0.939). A slight seasonal climate variation was shown in the dry season, where the rotavirus was found to be positive in 250 out of 552 specimens (45.3%). However, in the wet season, only 177 out of the 393 specimens (45.0%) were proved to be positive. Conclusions: Our study showed that rotavirus is found year-round, and has a negative correlation to temperature, a moderate correlation only to humidity, but no significant correlation at all to either rainfall or wind speed.

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