Objective To study the influence of meteorological factors on the incidence of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) in Jiaodong area, Shandong province, and provide reference for the effective prevention and control of SFTS.

Methods Quasi-Possion regression was used to analyze the relationship between the incidence of SFTS and meteorological factors in Qingdao, Yantai and Weihai, and meteorological factors with significant difference were selected to be included in the distributed lag non-linear models (DLNM), and a nonlinear exposure-response relationship between meteorological factors and the incidence of SFTS was established for Qingdao, Yantai and Weihai, respectively. The relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were used as indicators. Meanwhile, the estimated parameters were incorporated into the multivariate meta-model to obtain the comprehensive effects of meteorological factors on SFTS.

Results Obvious seasonality and cyclicity of SFTS incidence in Jiaodong were observed. Most of the cases occurred from June to September. When the weekly average temperature was higher than 13.65 ℃, the incidence of SFTS increased (RR=11.34, 95%CI: 8.37–15.70). When the weekly average relative humidity was higher than 66.83%, the incidence of SFTS increased (RR=1.19, 95%CI: 1.02–1.39). When the average air pressure was above 1011.37hPa, the incidence of SFTS decreased (RR=0.56, 95%CI: 0.36–0.84). When the average weekly wind speed was above 3.27 m/s, the incidence of SFTS decreased (RR=0.66, 95%CI: 0.58–0.75). There were nonlinear cumulative and lag effects of temperature on the incidence of SFTS: low temperature (−0.88 ℃ and 3.92 ℃) reduced the risk for SFTS, and high temperature (22.00 ℃ and 26.35 ℃) increased the risk for SFTS.

Conclusion In Jiaodong, temperature, relative humidity, air pressure and wind speed were possible factors influencing the incidence of SFTS, and temperature had non-linear lag effect on the incidence of SFTS.