Abstract: Objective  To explore the local relationship between tuberculosis and influencing factors in Shandong Province, and to provide evidence for appropriate regional TB prevention and control strategy development. Methods  The data of TB notification and related influencing factors during 2005 to 2008 in Shandong province were collected. The spatial autocorrelation of tuberculosis was analyzed by Moran’I. Geographical weighted regression (GWR) model was constructed to analyze the local relationship between tuberculosis notification rate and various influencing factors, and mapped by ArcGIS9.0. The notification rates of active tuberculosis of each county during 2005 to 2008 in Shandong were 12.79/100 000～107.35/1 000 000, 16.01/1 000 000～86.52/1 000 000, 17.36/1 000 000～92.10/1 000 000 and 17.86/1 000 000～114.86/1 000 000 respectively. Results  The spatial autocorrelation analysis showed that the spatial distribution of tuberculosis notification rate had significant spatial positive correlation (Moran’s  I were 0.3517, 0.3505, 0.3337 and 0.3116 respectively, and P value were all less than 0.05) in Shandong between 2005 and 2008. GWR model displayed better fitting effect than global OLS model (the declines of akaike information criterion(AIC) were all higher than 3, and R² all increased, eg. the AIC and R² were 1168.8380 and 0.3537 for GWR model, and 1173.5410 and 0.1350 for OLS model). The local R² appeared significant spatial variability (eg. the local R² was 0.1162~0.1798 in 2008). Conclusion  GWR model can reveal the spatial heterogeneity of the effect of influencing factors on tuberculosis notification rate, and regional tuberculosis prevention and control programme and strategy should be developed based on the spatial characteristic of the impact factors and the local relationship with tuberculosis notification rate.

Key words: Tuberculosis/epidemiology, Registries, Geography, Regression analysis, Epidemiologic studies