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Cholera, an acute diarrheal disease spread by lack of hygiene and contaminated water, is a major public health risk in many countries. As cholera is triggered by environmental conditions influenced by climatic variables, establishing a correlation between cholera incidence and climatic variables would provide an opportunity to develop a cholera forecasting model. Considering the auto-regressive nature and the seasonal behavioral patterns of cholera, a seasonal-auto-regressive-integrated-moving-average (SARIMA) model was used for time-series analysis during 2000-2013. As both rainfall (r = 0.43) and maximum temperature (r = 0.56) have the strongest influence on the occurrence of cholera incidence, single-variable (SVMs) and multi-variable SARIMA models (MVMs) were developed, compared and tested for evaluating their relationship with cholera incidence. A low relationship was found with relative humidity (r = 0.28), ENSO (r = 0.21) and SOI (r = -0.23). Using SVM for a 1 °C increase in maximum temperature at one-month lead time showed a 7% increase of cholera incidence (p < 0.001). However, MVM (AIC = 15, BIC = 36) showed better performance than SVM (AIC = 21, BIC = 39). An MVM using rainfall and monthly mean daily maximum temperature with a one-month lead time showed a better fit (RMSE = 14.7, MAE = 11) than the MVM with no lead time (RMSE = 16.2, MAE = 13.2) in forecasting. This result will assist in predicting cholera risks and better preparedness for public health management in the future.

Objective: The objective of this study was to describe the age and sex-specific prevalence of renal insufficiency, and observe its trends over a decade at an urban Bangladesh setup., Method: This was a cross-sectional study, in which we observed the Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR) of 218,888 adults, aged ≥19 years, who had submitted their blood specimen to the Clinical Biochemistry Laboratory of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) during the years 2006-2015. We applied CKD-EPI definition in estimating eGFR using their age-and sex-specific serum creatinine concentrations. Based on the eGFR, we classified the population into five stages of renal insufficiency (stage-1 to stage-5), at age intervals of five-years. Data were analysed using the Linear Regression and Multinomial Logistic Regression models., Results: Females constituted 43% (n = 94,931) of the study population; and 34% (n = 42,576) of the males and 31% (n = 29,830) of the females had their serum creatinine concentrations above the upper limit of the laboratory reference cut-off. The overall prevalence of stage-2 to stage-5 renal insufficiency were 24% (n = 52,126), 17% (n = 38,539), 8% (n = 16,504) and 6% (n = 12,665) respectively; the prevalence were 23% (n = 1,890), 19% (n = 1,579), 9% (n = 769) and 9% (n = 770) respectively in 2006, and 24% (n = 10,062), 17% (n = 6,903), 6% (n = 2,537) and 5% (n = 1,924) respectively in 2015. The prevalence was higher among the females. At least 2% of the adults, younger than <44 years, had stage-4 and stage-5 in 2015. The age-adjusted eGFR was significantly lower among the post-menopausal females (aged ≥46 y) compared to the same age group males (64.08±10.83 vs. 66.83±10.41 mL/min/1.73 m2; p<0.001). Compared to 2006, the number of individuals with renal insufficiency (stage 2 and above) had increased at least two times, irrespective of age, in 2015. A single year of increase in the age was significantly associated with 1.32 unit reductions in the eGFR; and the reductions were higher for females who also had higher odds of renal insufficiency stages-2 and beyond., Conclusion: This study observed high prevalence of stage-2 to stage-5 renal insufficiency in Bangladeshi populations, irrespective of age, and especially among the females., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.