Abstract
BACKGROUND: Syphilis remains a major public health concern in China. We aimed to construct an optimum model to forecast syphilis epidemic trends and provide effective precautionary measures for prevention and control. METHODS: Data on the incidence of syphilis between 1982 and 2020 were obtained from the China Health Statistics Yearbook. An exponential smoothing model (ES model) and a BP neural network model were constructed, and on this basis, the ES-BP combination model was created. The prediction performance was assessed to compare the MAE (Mean Absolute Error), MSE (Mean Squared Error), MAPE (Mean Absolute Percentage Error), and RMSE (Root Mean Square Error). RESULTS: The optimum ES model was Brown's linear trend model, which had the lowest MAE and MAPE values, and its residual was a white noise sequence (P=0.359). The optimum BP neural network model had three layers with the number of nodes in the input, hidden, and output layers set to 5, 11, and 1, and the mean values of MAE, MSE, and RMSE by five-fold cross-validation were 1.519, 6.894, and 1.969, respectively. The ES-BP combination model had three layers, with model nodes 1, 4, and 1. The lowest mean values of MAE, MSE, and RMSE obtained by five-fold cross-validation were 1.265, 5.739, and 2.105, respectively. CONCLUSION: The ES, BP neural network, and ES-BP combination models can be used to predict syphilis incidence, but the prediction performance of the ES-BP combination model is better than that of a basic ES model and a basic BP neural network model.