Quantifying Transmission Heterogeneity Using Both Pathogen Phylogenies and Incidence Time Series.
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Published version
Author(s)
Li, LM
Grassly, NC
Fraser, C
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Heterogeneity in individual-level transmissibility can be quantified by the dispersion parameter k of the offspring distribution. Quantifying heterogeneity is important as it affects other parameter estimates, it modulates the degree of unpredictability of an epidemic, and it needs to be accounted for in models of infection control. Aggregated data such as incidence time series are often not sufficiently informative to estimate k. Incorporating phylogenetic analysis can help to estimate k concurrently with other epidemiological parameters. We have developed an inference framework that uses particle Markov Chain Monte Carlo to estimate k and other epidemiological parameters using both incidence time series and the pathogen phylogeny. Using the framework to fit a modified compartmental transmission model that includes the parameter k to simulated data, we found that more accurate and less biased estimates of the reproductive number were obtained by combining epidemiological and phylogenetic analyses. However, k was most accurately estimated using pathogen phylogeny alone. Accurately estimating k was necessary for unbiased estimates of the reproductive number, but it did not affect the accuracy of reporting probability and epidemic start date estimates. We further demonstrated that inference was possible in the presence of phylogenetic uncertainty by sampling from the posterior distribution of phylogenies. Finally, we used the inference framework to estimate transmission parameters from epidemiological and genetic data collected during a poliovirus outbreak. Despite the large degree of phylogenetic uncertainty, we demonstrated that incorporating phylogenetic data in parameter inference improved the accuracy and precision of estimates.
Date Issued
2017-07-11
Date Acceptance
2017-07-01
Citation
Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2017, 34 (11), pp.2982-2995
ISSN
1537-1719
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Start Page
2982
End Page
2995
Journal / Book Title
Molecular Biology and Evolution
Volume
34
Issue
11
Copyright Statement
© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
PII: 3952784
Subjects
infectious disease
parameter inference
phylodynamics
polio
Publication Status
Published online