Estimating Time of Infection Using Prior Serological and Individual Information Can Greatly Improve Incidence Estimation of Human and Wildlife Infections

PLoS Comput Biol. 2016 May 13;12(5):e1004882. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004882. eCollection 2016 May.

Abstract

Diseases of humans and wildlife are typically tracked and studied through incidence, the number of new infections per time unit. Estimating incidence is not without difficulties, as asymptomatic infections, low sampling intervals and low sample sizes can introduce large estimation errors. After infection, biomarkers such as antibodies or pathogens often change predictably over time, and this temporal pattern can contain information about the time since infection that could improve incidence estimation. Antibody level and avidity have been used to estimate time since infection and to recreate incidence, but the errors on these estimates using currently existing methods are generally large. Using a semi-parametric model in a Bayesian framework, we introduce a method that allows the use of multiple sources of information (such as antibody level, pathogen presence in different organs, individual age, season) for estimating individual time since infection. When sufficient background data are available, this method can greatly improve incidence estimation, which we show using arenavirus infection in multimammate mice as a test case. The method performs well, especially compared to the situation in which seroconversion events between sampling sessions are the main data source. The possibility to implement several sources of information allows the use of data that are in many cases already available, which means that existing incidence data can be improved without the need for additional sampling efforts or laboratory assays.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Animals, Wild
  • Bayes Theorem
  • Computational Biology
  • Computer Simulation
  • Humans
  • Incidence
  • Infections / epidemiology*
  • Infections / immunology
  • Infections / veterinary*
  • Mice
  • Models, Biological
  • Models, Statistical
  • Seroconversion
  • Time Factors

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the University of Antwerp grant number GOA BOF FFB3567, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Focus Program 1596 and the Antwerp Study Centre for Infectious Diseases (ASCID). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.