The dynamics of measles in sub-Saharan Africa

Ferrari, Matthew J.; Grais, Rebecca F.; Bharti, Nita; Conlan, Andrew J. K.; Bjørnstad, Ottar N.; Wolfson, Lara J.; Guérin, Philippe J.; Djibo, Ali; Grenfell, Bryan T.

doi:10.1038/nature06509

Cited by 319 publications

(398 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Environmental forcing may operate through enhanced persistence or dispersal of infectious particles by certain conditions of temperature or humidity (Lowen et al 2007), or environmental conditions may affect the condition of the host in ways that favour the pathogen (Adams & Hewison 2007). Social forcing operates via enhanced transmission through aggregation of individuals at certain times of year (Schenzle 1984;Fine & Clarkson 1986;Bjørnstad et al 2002;Ferrari et al 2008). Identifying the drivers of seasonal variation in disease transmission rates is important, since seasonal variation is a strong force in shaping disease dynamics (Earn et al 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonality and comparative dynamics of six childhood infections in pre-vaccination Copenhagen

et al. 2009

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Seasonal variation in infection transmission is a key determinant of epidemic dynamics of acute infections. For measles, the best-understood strongly immunizing directly transmitted childhood infection, the perception is that term-time forcing is the main driver of seasonality in developed countries. The degree to which this holds true across other acute immunizing childhood infections is not clear. Here, we identify seasonal transmission patterns using a unique long-term dataset with weekly incidence of six infections including measles. Data on age -incidence allow us to quantify the mean age of infection. Results indicate correspondence between dips in transmission and school holidays for some infections, but there are puzzling discrepancies, despite close correspondence between average age of infection and age of schooling. Theoretical predictions of the relationship between amplitude of seasonality and basic reproductive rate of infections that should result from term-time forcing are also not upheld. We conclude that where yearly trajectories of susceptible numbers are perturbed, e.g. via waning of immunity, seasonality is unlikely to be entirely driven by term-time forcing. For the three bacterial infections, pertussis, scarlet fever and diphtheria, there is additionally a strong increase in transmission during the late summer before the end of school vacations.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonality and comparative dynamics of six childhood infections in pre-vaccination Copenhagen

et al. 2009

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“…Infants born to immune mothers receive maternal antibodies transferred during the prenatal period and remain protected until approximately 4-6 months of age [21]. However, in low-income settings, infants lose protection from maternal antibodies at a younger age [22].…”

Section: What Are the Causes Of Measles Outbreaks In Settings With Himentioning

confidence: 99%

Research priorities for global measles and rubella control and eradication

Goodson

Chu

Rota

et al. 2012

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“…The proportion of zero observations (over a suitably long period of time) is one common measure of stochastic extinction [6,7,10,20,34]. This measure is appealing owing to its simplicity, but has been criticized as sensitive to disease reporting.…”

Section: (B) the Obscuring Effects Of Incomplete Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, stochastic extinction is not easily distinguished from incomplete reporting. Several works have explicitly incorporated estimation of incomplete and variable reporting into dynamical models of populations [6,17] and metapopulations [7]. Nonetheless, disease reporting (and variability thereof ) has been largely absent from modern population and metapopulation models that studied stochastic extinction and disease persistence in E&W [11,[24][25][26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, observational datasets can provide extensive spatial and temporal coverage difficult to achieve through field experiments. From disease ecology to wildlife and natural resource ecology, these datasets have allowed ecologists to evaluate the strength and significance of a wide range of dynamical processes [1][2][3][4][5][6][7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Conserved patterns of incomplete reporting in pre-vaccine era childhood diseases

2014

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Incomplete observation is an important yet often neglected feature of observational ecological timeseries. In particular, observational case report timeseries of childhood diseases have played an important role in the formulation of mechanistic dynamical models of populations and metapopulations. Yet to our knowledge, no comprehensive study of childhood disease reporting probabilities (commonly referred to as reporting rates) has been conducted to date. Here, we provide a detailed analysis of measles and whooping cough reporting probabilities in pre-vaccine United States cities and states, as well as measles in cities of England and Wales. Overall, we find the variability between locations and diseases greatly exceeds that between methods or time periods. We demonstrate a strong relationship within location between diseases and within disease between geographical areas. In addition, we find that demographic covariates such as ethnic composition and school attendance explain a non-trivial proportion of reporting probability variation. Overall, our findings show that disease reporting is both variable and nonrandom and that completeness of reporting is influenced by disease identity, geography and socioeconomic factors. We suggest that variations in incomplete observation can be accounted for and that doing so can reveal ecologically important features that are otherwise obscured.

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The dynamics of measles in sub-Saharan Africa

Cited by 319 publications

References 41 publications

Seasonality and comparative dynamics of six childhood infections in pre-vaccination Copenhagen

Seasonality and comparative dynamics of six childhood infections in pre-vaccination Copenhagen

Research priorities for global measles and rubella control and eradication

Conserved patterns of incomplete reporting in pre-vaccine era childhood diseases

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