Simulation Studies for Dengue Transmission and Within-Host Immune Responses

• Activity Number: 550
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 7, 2013 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Alexander Kirpich*+ and Yang Yang and Ira Longini
• Companies: University of Florida and University of Florida and University of Florida
• Keywords: Dengue ; Serotype-specific ; MCMC ; simulation ; guidelines

Abstract

Dengue is a neglected tropical infectious disease transmitted between mosquitoes and human be- ings. There are four known serotypes cocirculating with similar clinical symptoms. Infection with one serotype provides permanent immunity against it. Secondary or tertiary infections lead to more severe diseases than primary ones. Serotype-specific laboratory testing was not available until re- cently. Tests were only performed on infected people with symptoms, leaving asymptomatic infec- tions undetected. We propose to simulate dengue epidemics together with immune responses. In this simulation study infection outcomes are observable only during a hypothetical study period and only on those randomly selected symptomatic infections. A cohort study data conducted from 2004 to 2010 in Nicaragua is a motivating data set. We investigate quality of the inference based on the amount of known full infection histories in the sample.