Emergency Department Visit Data for Rapid Detection and Monitoring of Norovirus Activity, United States

作者：Rha Brian^*; Burrer Sherry; Park Soyoun; Trivedi Tarak; Parashar Umesh D; Lopman Benjamin A

来源：Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2013, 19(8): 1214-1221.

DOI：10.3201/eid1908.130483

Noroviruses are the leading cause of gastroenteritis in the United States, but timely measures of disease are lacking. BioSense, a national-level electronic surveillance system, assigns data on chief complaints (patient symptoms) collected during emergency department (ED) visits to 78 subsyndromes in near real-time. In a series of linear regression models, BioSense visits mapped by chief complaints of diarrhea and nausea/vomiting subsyndromes as a monthly proportion of all visits correlated strongly with reported norovirus outbreaks from 6 states during 2007-2010. Higher correlations were seen for diarrhea (R = 0.828-0.926) than for nausea/vomiting (R = 0.729-0.866) across multiple age groups. Diarrhea ED visit proportions exhibited winter seasonality attributable to norovirus; rotavirus contributed substantially for children <5 years of age. Diarrhea ED visit data estimated the onset, peak, and end of norovirus season within 4 weeks of observed dates and could be reliable, timely indicators of norovirus activity.

• 出版日期2013-8