Seasonal variation in mortality in The Netherlands.

STUDY OBJECTIVE--The aim was to describe the pattern of seasonal variation in all cause mortality in The Netherlands, and to analyse the contribution of specific causes of death to the winter excess of all cause mortality. DESIGN--Daily numbers of deaths in The Netherlands, by cause, were obtained for the period 1979-1987. Patterns of variation were analysed using Poisson regression. The model related the observed number of deaths to (1) the number expected for that day on the basis of person-days at risk by age and sex, (2) secular trend, and (3) first and higher order cosine terms where appr... Mehr ...