Abstract
From 2008 to 2024, a total of 15,465 syphilis cases were reported in Xining City, Qinghai Province, yielding an average annual incidence of 4.44 per 10,000 population and a male-to-female ratio of 1.14. Temporal analysis revealed a steadily increasing trend over the 17‑year period, with a consistent seasonal peak in March. Spatial autocorrelation analysis showed significant clustering (global Moran’s I = 0.217, P < 0.05), with high‑high clusters concentrated in eastern urban districts and low‑low clusters predominantly in northern areas. The standard deviational ellipse indicated a dominant southeast–northwest directional trend. Spatio‑temporal scan statistics identified four statistically significant high‑incidence clusters, and Kriging interpolation produced a smoothed surface suggesting elevated transmission risk in the eastern and southern townships. These findings demonstrate that syphilis incidence in Xining increased steadily and expanded geographically from urban centers to peripheral areas over the study period, with pronounced spatial and spatio‑temporal heterogeneity. As a hypothesis‑generating descriptive spatial analysis, this study supports enhanced dynamic surveillance, targeted interventions in high‑risk regions, and locally adapted public health measures to strengthen syphilis control.
Similar content being viewed by others
Spatiotemporal dynamics of syphilis in pregnant women and congenital syphilis in the state of São Paulo, Brazil
Long-term public health impact of doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis on syphilis transmission
Factors related to adverse pregnancy outcomes of maternal syphilis in Nanning, Guangxi, China 2016–2020
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the invaluable support from Xining Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in facilitating this research. We extend profound gratitude to all the public health professionals whose unwavering dedication in challenging environments exemplifies extraordinary commitment to public health.
Funding
This work was supported by the leading academic team established by the Xining Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Document No. Ningjikyeye [2025] 21).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethics approval and consent to participate
This study was approved by the Ethics Review Committee of the Xining Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Approval No. qhxncdcllsc—2025020) and followed relevant guidelines. Patient data, summarized at the city level, were retrospective and involved low-risk studies. All personal information involved in this article was conducted under the supervision of the relevant researchers at the Xining Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and only secondary aggregated data were used in the analysis, which did not involve participants’ names, identifying information, telephone numbers, or residential addresses; therefore, the Ethics Review Committee of the Xining Center for Disease Control and Prevention waived written informed consent.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Supplementary Material 1 (download DOCX )
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ren, Y., Shi, Y., Lin, J. et al. Analysis of the spatio-temporal pattern and evolutionary trends of syphilis at township level in Xining City, Qinghai Province, China from 2008 to 2024.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-53877-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-53877-7
Keywords
- Syphilis
- Epidemiological characteristics
- Spatial autocorrelation
- Spatio-temporal scanning
- Kriging interpolation
Source: Ecology - nature.com
