Novel methods in data science to quantify viral and environmental triggers of chronic disease exacerbations

患有慢性疾病的人有过早死亡的危险，并因这些疾病而遭受严重疾病。健康状况恶化，或哮喘、慢性阻塞性肺病和冠心病的“恶化”期代价高昂，对患者不利。众所周知，病毒感染（如感冒或流感）会引发病情恶化，但还有其他因素，如空气污染、低温或高温也会引发病情恶化。尽管知道病毒的重要性，但对于病毒在普通人群中的传播如何影响城市或城镇一级的恶化时间，人们还没有很好的了解。这也使得人们很难估计其他触发因素的影响，比如迫切需要的空气污染。这项研究将分析疾病恶化的模式，包括普通人群中的呼吸道病毒循环以及空气污染等非传染性诱因。

People living with chronic diseases are at risk of early death, and suffer significant illness due to these diseases. Worsening periods of health, or "exacerbations" of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and coronary heart disease are costly and are bad for patients. Infection by a virus (like a cold, or 'flu) is known to trigger exacerbations, but there are other factors, like air pollution, and low or high temperatures that can also trigger them. Despite knowing the importance of viruses, there is not good understanding of how circulation of viruses in the general population affects the timing of exacerbations at the level of a city or town. This also makes it hard to estimate the effect of other triggers, like air pollution, which is urgently needed.This study will analyse the patterns of exacerbations, including respiratory virus circulation in the general population as well as non-infectious triggers, such as air pollution.