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Environmental factors and infectious diseases: A systematic review

Abstract:

Environmental factors and infectious diseases are closely related, mathematical models seek to explain these interactions, however, the same analytical practices are often observed with infectious diseases despite substantial differences from non-infectious diseases that can result in analytical challenges. Objective: For this reason, a bibliographic review was carried out on the antecedents, importance and use of mathematical models used in infectious diseases. Methods: After filtering, 15 articles from the multidisciplinary databases were analyzed: Virtual Health Library, EBSCO Host, Scielo, the academic search engines Google and Science Direct. Results: Published studies on the associations between climatic factors related to malaria, cholera, dengue, influenza and SARS. Mathematical models are a useful instrument for addressing current health problems. The use of more complex models such as the SI, SIS and SIR models are a better modeling scheme for infectious diseases, the importance of cross immunity in influenza models, the importance of vaccination campaigns and quarantine periods in an epidemiological model. Conclusion: The consequence of not taking adequate measures to address these problems is the distortion of adequate quantifications of the risk of exposure factors. Future studies should pay particular attention to the details of interaction, infection, recovery and examine alternative models or methods that improve the studies, using time series regression analysis for environmental determinants of infectious diseases.