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Episodic outbreaks bias estimates of age-specific force of infection: a corrected method using measles as an example.

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dc.contributor Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Penn State University, PA 16802, USA. mferrari@psu.edu
dc.creator Ferrari, M J
dc.creator Djibo, A
dc.creator Grais, R
dc.creator Grenfell, B T
dc.creator Bjørnstad, O N
dc.date 2010-01
dc.date.accessioned 2017-01-31T07:17:29Z
dc.date.available 2017-01-31T07:17:29Z
dc.identifier Episodic outbreaks bias estimates of age-specific force of infection: a corrected method using measles as an example. 2010, 138 (1):108-16 Epidemiol. Infect.
dc.identifier 1469-4409
dc.identifier 19538818
dc.identifier 10.1017/S0950268809990173
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/10144/98914
dc.identifier http://fieldresearch.msf.org/msf/handle/10144/98914
dc.identifier Epidemiology and Infection
dc.identifier.uri http://dspace.mediu.edu.my:8181/xmlui/handle/10144/98914
dc.description Understanding age-specific differences in infection rates can be important in predicting the magnitude of and mortality in outbreaks and targeting age groups for vaccination programmes. Standard methods to estimate age-specific rates assume that the age-specific force of infection is constant in time. However, this assumption may easily be violated in the face of a highly variable outbreak history, as recently observed for acute immunizing infections like measles, in strongly seasonal settings. Here we investigate the biases that result from ignoring such fluctuations in incidence and present a correction based on the epidemic history. We apply the method to data from a measles outbreak in Niamey, Niger and show that, despite a bimodal age distribution of cases, the estimated age-specific force of infection is unimodal and concentrated in young children (<5 years) consistent with previous analyses of age-specific rates in the region.
dc.language en
dc.publisher Cambridge University Press
dc.rights Archived with thanks to Epidemiology and Infection and Cambridge University Press
dc.title Episodic outbreaks bias estimates of age-specific force of infection: a corrected method using measles as an example.


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