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Thanks for Ibrahim Radwan's interest and question. We've checked the reference 1-4, which used the data sources from Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC), in contrast to our study using Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD).
The reason for less dengue patients during 2000-2012 in our study, may be that our study population were hospital inpatients, while the dengue patients collected in Taiwan CDC included those without hospitalization. As reported in Luh's study4, hospitalization only accounts for 86% of direct costs associated with dengue patients in Taiwan; some dengue patients may be only treat in outpatients or emergency.
Besides, the reason for more cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) in our study is that, NHIRD included not only "indigenous", but also "imported" cases.
Taiwan CDC only reported indigenous DHF cases, without details in imported dengue cases.
As shown in Wang's study3 (Table 1), there were 1769 imported dengue cases during 2000-2012, such as travelers or immigrant workers. Taiwan CDC did not report details about DHF in these 1769 cases.
However, our study population would include them if they had hospitalization records.
Hope this could answer your questions.
Reference
1. Hsu H-Y, Lai S-K, Kuo C-H, Wu C-W, Liu D-P. An epidemiological analysis of dengue hemorrhagic fever cases in Taiwan from 2003 to 2011. Epidemiology Bulletin 2013; 29(21): 268-80.
2. Lin C-C, Huang Y-H, Shu P-Y, et al. Characteristic of dengue disease in Taiwan: 2002-2007. The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene 2010; 82(4): 731-9.
3. Wang S-F, Wang W-H, Chang K, et al. Severe Dengue Fever Outbreak in Taiwan. The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene 2016; 94(1): 193-7.
4. Luh DL, Liu CC, Luo YR, Chen SC. Economic cost and burden of dengue during epidemics and non-epidemic years in Taiwan. Journal of infection and public health 2018; 11(2): 215-23.