WIN EPISCOPE 2.0: improved epidemiological software for veterinary medicine

Abstract

RECENT decades have witnessed changes in the practice of veterinary medicine (Thrusfield 1998). In developed countries, the successful control of the major infectious diseases and the resultant intensification of livestock enterprises has produced a shift in interest towards complex, frequently noninfectious, diseases, and increasing emphasis is being placed on the health of herds rather than individual animals (Brand and others 1996). In contrast, in developing countries, the control of infectious diseases is still the major problem and progress needs to be made both in the measurement of disease frequencies, for example of trypanosomiasis in Africa and Asia, and in the implementation of control and/or eradication campaigns, for example for rinderpest (IAEA 1991). These changes have required the application of quantitative epidemiological procedures (Noordhuizen 1996), notably the use of rigorous sampling theory when conducting field surveys, and observational studies to identify the risk factors associated with multifactorial diseases in both farm practice and companion animal practice. Moreover, diagnostic tests applied either to individual animals, or to animal populations in eradication campaigns, can only be interpreted correctly when their validity and reliability has been assessed. Despite a long history in veterinary medicine, many diagnostic tests, particularly serological tests, have not been so assessed.The methods and statistical theory that underpin these quantitative procedures have been described by Martin and others (1987), Thrusfield (1997), and Noordhuizen and others ( 1997), and several computer programs have been designed to facilitate the necessary computations by veterinarians and physicians. These include suites of programs, such as EPI INFO (Dean and others 1995), PEPI (Gahlinger and Abramson 1995), EPISCOPE (Frankena and others 1990) and EPIZOO (Kouba 1997), and many programs for specific, individual analyses (The Epidemiology Monitor). However, these programs have limitations, especially for users who lack a grounding in analytical techniques. The package WIN EPISCOPE 2.0 has therefore been designed to combine the procedures that are commonly used in the design and analysis of epidemiological studies into an easy-to-understand form based on Microsoft Windows.The package provides the main computational procedures used in the design and analysis of simple field surveys, in control campaigns and observational studies, and in the assessment of diagnostic tests, and includes an introduction to basic mathematical modelling of infectious diseases. For each computation, comprehensive'Help' menus are provided which describe the techniques and list, with references, the formulae that are used. The package is an improved and expanded version of EPISCOPE for MS DOS (Frankena and others 1990) and of its first Microsoft Windows release, WIN EPISCOPE 1.0 (Ortega and others 1996).

Effect of a GnRH analogue (Maprelin) on the reproductive performance of gilts and sows

“…The number of animals in each age category (gilts, primiparous, and pluriparous) was sufficient to detect differences of at least 5.0% in the ERs between the groups with 95% confidence, 80% power, and a standard deviation of 3.1 (WinEpiscope 2.0) [25]. Data analysis was conducted in a blinded manner.…”

Correlation of Borrelia burgdorferi Sensu Lato Prevalence in Questing Ixodes ricinus Ticks with Specific Abiotic Traits in the Western Palearctic

“…We sought to define the bias of the reported prevalence in ticks and its significance by applying two tests over the data from the papers listed in File S2 in the supplemental material. The agreement of the different tests or the sensitivity and specificity of the tests was analyzed using Win Episcope 2.0 (38). A kappa value greater than 0.6 was obtained for every comparison of two tests.…”

Seroprevalence ofMycoplasma synoviaein Dutch commercial poultry farms

“…The 95% confidence interval (CI) for finite population numbers and the difference in 95% CIs between the different subtypes as well as sample sizes were calculated with Winepiscope 2.0 (Thrusfield et al, 2001).…”