Nearly half of the world’s inhabitants lives in locations the place mosquito-borne dengue can get away. The Aedes mosquito is a identified service. Credit score: Pixabay/CC0 Public Area
Researchers at Northeastern College can predict the emergence of a dengue fever outbreak with 80% accuracy—a breakthrough for public well being officers tasked with getting ready careworkers to deal with spikes within the illness.
Nearly half of the world’s inhabitants lives in locations the place mosquito-borne dengue fever can get away, and circumstances worldwide are on the rise, having doubled from 2023 to 2024.
About 40,000 individuals die from the virus yearly, in line with U.S. nationwide information.
“We wanted to reduce the cognitive load for decision-makers who want to extract the best predictions from multiple mathematical models,” says Mauricio Santillana, a professor of physics and director of Northeastern’s Machine Intelligence Group for the Betterment of Well being and the Atmosphere. “There are computational models called ensemble methods to do this.”
Utilizing machine studying to research current dengue forecast fashions, researchers determine probably the most correct prediction for a particular area. They have a look at how correct particular person fashions carry out over three months to find out which can probably be most correct for the next three months, Santillana says.
One other method is to seek out consensus amongst obtainable forecasts. Completely different ensemble fashions carry out higher beneath totally different situations, he says.
Monitoring and predicting illness outbreaks are difficult, Santillana says, as a result of international locations have alternative ways of reporting circumstances. Some international locations do not have dependable funding for assessments for prognosis confirmations. However even when information reporting was delayed or incomplete, the ensemble strategies constantly ranked among the many prime three fashions when prospectively examined over a yr in 180 places world wide.
The analysis was revealed within the Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences. The method was examined in components of Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, Peru and Puerto Rico.
The virus thrives in tropical and subtropical areas, says Northeastern public well being analysis professor Michael Johansson. Johansson just lately accomplished analysis into how dengue outbreaks unfold in North and South America. Areas like Puerto Rico, he says, can shortly go from just a few thousand reported circumstances to twenty,000 circumstances, placing enormous stress on the well being care system.
Earlier analysis performed in Southeast Asia discovered that dengue epidemics are inclined to happen on the similar time in eight international locations throughout a area. Johansson needed to know if the identical sample would show true for the Americas.
Johansson’s analysis checked out information from 14 international locations throughout the Americas between 1985 and 2018. It was revealed within the journal Science Translational Drugs.
“We could see peaks happening at different times across the region,” he says. “Early in the calendar year in the southern hemisphere and moving north on a trajectory through the year.”
Well being officers in dengue-prone areas will discover clues about upcoming outbreaks by taking a look at what is occurring close by, Johansson says.
“It’s the network of places that is really important,” he says. “You need to not be just looking at what’s happening with temperature or El Niño, for example, but also what’s happening in neighboring countries.”
What’s driving these patterns stays unclear, he says, but it surely’s potential that it’s a mixture of local weather and human mobility. These components probably additionally contribute to elevated dengue in recent times, together with shifting socioeconomic components. Dengue outbreaks replicate the methods human beings and mosquitoes work together, he says, modifications in rubbish assortment or water storage—each of which contribute to mosquito breeding habitat.
As well as, enormous modifications in human journey patterns are probably one of many essential ways in which dengue spreads. If a traveler turns into contaminated after which is bitten by a mosquito within the new location, that mosquito can turn into contaminated and chew different individuals.
“People move around a lot more than they used to,” Johansson says, “which means that the virus is moving around with people a lot more than it used to.”
Extra info:
Skyler Wu et al, Ensemble approaches for short-term dengue fever forecasts: A world analysis examine, Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2422335122
Talia M. Quandelacy et al, Synchronized dynamics of dengue throughout the Americas, Science Translational Drugs (2025). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adq4326
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