A graph-based evidence synthesis approach to detecting outbreak clusters: An application to dog rabies
File(s)journal.pcbi.1006554.pdf (2.31 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Early assessment of infectious disease outbreaks is key to implementing timely and effective control measures. In particular, rapidly recognising whether infected individuals stem from a single outbreak sustained by local transmission, or from repeated introductions, is crucial to adopt effective interventions. In this study, we introduce a new framework for combining several data streams, e.g. temporal, spatial and genetic data, to identify clusters of related cases of an infectious disease. Our method explicitly accounts for underreporting, and allows incorporating preexisting information about the disease, such as its serial interval, spatial kernel, and mutation rate. We define, for each data stream, a graph connecting all cases, with edges weighted by the corresponding pairwise distance between cases. Each graph is then pruned by removing distances greater than a given cutoff, defined based on preexisting information on the disease and assumptions on the reporting rate. The pruned graphs corresponding to different data streams are then merged by intersection to combine all data types; connected components define clusters of cases related for all types of data. Estimates of the reproduction number (the average number of secondary cases infected by an infectious individual in a large population), and the rate of importation of the disease into the population, are also derived. We test our approach on simulated data and illustrate it using data on dog rabies in Central African Republic. We show that the outbreak clusters identified using our method are consistent with structures previously identified by more complex, computationally intensive approaches.
Date Issued
2018-12-17
Date Acceptance
2018-10-09
Citation
PLoS Computational Biology, 2018, 14 (12)
ISSN
1553-734X
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Journal / Book Title
PLoS Computational Biology
Volume
14
Issue
12
Copyright Statement
© 2018 Cori et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
License URL
Sponsor
Medical Research Council (MRC)
National Institute for Health Research
USAID
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Grant Number
MR/K010174/1B
HPRU-2012-10080
AID-OAA-F-16-00115
MR/R015600/1
Subjects
06 Biological Sciences
08 Information And Computing Sciences
01 Mathematical Sciences
Bioinformatics
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e1006554