Journal article
Incorporating infectious duration-dependent transmission into Bayesian epidemic models
Biometrical journal, Vol.65(3), 2100401
03/2023
DOI: 10.1002/bimj.202100401
PMID: 36285663
Appears in UI Libraries Support Open Access
Abstract
Compartmental models are commonly used to describe the spread of infectious diseases by estimating the probabilities of transitions between important disease states. A significant challenge in fitting Bayesian compartmental models lies in the need to estimate the duration of the infectious period, based on limited data providing only symptom onset date or another proxy for the start of infectiousness. Commonly, the exponential distribution is used to describe the infectious duration, an overly simplistic approach, which is not biologically plausible. More flexible distributions can be used, but parameter identifiability and computational cost can worsen for moderately sized or large epidemics. In this article, we present a novel approach, which considers a curve of transmissibility over a fixed infectious duration. The incorporation of infectious duration-dependent (IDD) transmissibility, which decays to zero during the infectious period, is biologically reasonable for many viral infections and fixing the length of the infectious period eases computational complexity in model fitting. Through simulation, we evaluate different functional forms of IDD transmissibility curves and show that the proposed approach offers improved estimation of the time-varying reproductive number. We illustrate the benefit of our approach through a new analysis of the 1995 outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Incorporating infectious duration-dependent transmission into Bayesian epidemic models
- Creators
- Caitlin Ward - University of IowaGrant D Brown - University of IowaJacob J Oleson - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Biometrical journal, Vol.65(3), 2100401
- DOI
- 10.1002/bimj.202100401
- PMID
- 36285663
- NLM abbreviation
- Biom J
- ISSN
- 0323-3847
- eISSN
- 1521-4036
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Grant note
- DOI: 10.13039/100008893, name: University of Iowa
- Language
- English
- Electronic publication date
- 10/26/2022
- Date published
- 03/2023
- Academic Unit
- Biostatistics; Nursing
- Record Identifier
- 9984307559902771
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