Comparison of Seasonal Regression Models for Estimating Influenza-Associated Mortality in the United States: A Simulation Study

• Activity Number: 315
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2008 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Po-Yung Cheng*+ and William W. Thompson and Cecile Viboud and Corinne Ringholz and Tuyen Do and David K. Dhay
• Companies: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health and National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Keywords: Serfling regression model ; influenza ; deaths

Abstract

Based on patterns of mortality in the United States for the 1973/1974 through 2002/2003 respiratory seasons, we simulated baseline deaths and influenza-associated deaths for underlying pneumonia and influenza deaths (UPI), underlying respiratory and circulatory deaths (URC), and all-cause deaths (AC). The seasonal averages for the simulated influenza-associated deaths for UPI, URC, AC deaths were 6,400, 25,700, 36,600, respectively. We fit five different regression models to these data: a Serfling model which forecasted thresholds using 5-years of baseline data, two different Serfling regression models using influenza deaths as an indicator of influenza activity and two different robust regression models. Estimates of annual averages of influenza-associated deaths for the five models were highly correlated with the simulated influenza-associated deaths.