A micro-epidemiological analysis of febrile malaria in Coastal Kenya showing hotspots within hotspots
- Kilifi KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Collaborative Research Programme, Kenya
- Kilifi KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Collaborative Research Programme, United Kingdom
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- University of California, San Francisco, United States
- London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom
- John Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, United States
Abstract
Malaria transmission is spatially heterogeneous. This reduces the efficacy of control strategies, but focusing control strategies on clusters or 'hotspots' of transmission may be highly effective. Among 1,500 homesteads in coastal Kenya we calculated a) the fraction of febrile children with positive malaria smears per homestead, and b) the mean age of children with malaria per homestead. These two measures were inversely correlated, indicating that children in homesteads at higher transmission acquire immunity more rapidly. This inverse correlation increased gradually with increasing spatial scale of analysis, and hotspots of febrile malaria were identified at every scale. We found hotspots within hotspots, down to the level of an individual homestead. Febrile malaria hotspots were temporally unstable, but 4km radius hotspots could be targeted for one month following one month periods of surveillance.
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Ethics
Human subjects: Informed consent for participation was obtained, and specific ethical approval was obtained from the KEMRI Ethical Review Committee (SSC Protocol No. 2413: Spatial Epidemiology of Malaria Cases in the Kilifi District Demographic Surveillance Area). The KEMRI ethical review committee required that participants consent for participation in research and for their data to be stored, but does not require a further explicit statement consenting to publication. Our institutional guidelines would require this only in the event that individuals were identifiable in the publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Mercedes Pascual, University of Michigan, United States
Version history
- Received: December 19, 2013
- Accepted: April 1, 2014
- Accepted Manuscript published: April 24, 2014 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: April 29, 2014 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2014, Bejon et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A micro-epidemiological analysis of febrile malaria in Coastal Kenya showing hotspots within hotspots
eLife 3:e02130.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.02130
Further reading
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- Epidemiology and Global Health
- Microbiology and Infectious Disease
eLife has published papers on many tropical diseases, including malaria, Ebola, leishmaniases, Dengue and African sleeping sickness.
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- Epidemiology and Global Health
- Medicine
Background:
Although there are several efficacious vaccines against COVID-19, vaccination rates in many regions around the world remain insufficient to prevent continued high disease burden and emergence of viral variants. Repurposing of existing therapeutics that prevent or mitigate severe COVID-19 could help to address these challenges. The objective of this study was to determine whether prior use of bisphosphonates is associated with reduced incidence and/or severity of COVID-19.
Methods:
A retrospective cohort study utilizing payer-complete health insurance claims data from 8,239,790 patients with continuous medical and prescription insurance January 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020 was performed. The primary exposure of interest was use of any bisphosphonate from January 1, 2019 to February 29, 2020. Bisphosphonate users were identified as patients having at least one bisphosphonate claim during this period, who were then 1:1 propensity score-matched to bisphosphonate non-users by age, gender, insurance type, primary-care-provider visit in 2019, and comorbidity burden. Main outcomes of interest included: (a) any testing for SARS-CoV-2 infection; (b) COVID-19 diagnosis; and (c) hospitalization with a COVID-19 diagnosis between March 1, 2020 and June 30, 2020. Multiple sensitivity analyses were also performed to assess core study outcomes amongst more restrictive matches between BP users/non-users, as well as assessing the relationship between BP-use and other respiratory infections (pneumonia, acute bronchitis) both during the same study period as well as before the COVID outbreak.
Results:
A total of 7,906,603 patients for whom continuous medical and prescription insurance information was available were selected. A total of 450,366 bisphosphonate users were identified and 1:1 propensity score-matched to bisphosphonate non-users. Bisphosphonate users had lower odds ratios (OR) of testing for SARS-CoV-2 infection (OR = 0.22; 95%CI:0.21–0.23; p<0.001), COVID-19 diagnosis (OR = 0.23; 95%CI:0.22–0.24; p<0.001), and COVID-19-related hospitalization (OR = 0.26; 95%CI:0.24–0.29; p<0.001). Sensitivity analyses yielded results consistent with the primary analysis. Bisphosphonate-use was also associated with decreased odds of acute bronchitis (OR = 0.23; 95%CI:0.22–0.23; p<0.001) or pneumonia (OR = 0.32; 95%CI:0.31–0.34; p<0.001) in 2019, suggesting that bisphosphonates may protect against respiratory infections by a variety of pathogens, including but not limited to SARS-CoV-2.
Conclusions:
Prior bisphosphonate-use was associated with dramatically reduced odds of SARS-CoV-2 testing, COVID-19 diagnosis, and COVID-19-related hospitalizations. Prospective clinical trials will be required to establish a causal role for bisphosphonate-use in COVID-19-related outcomes.
Funding:
This study was supported by NIH grants, AR068383 and AI155865, a grant from MassCPR (to UHvA) and a CRI Irvington postdoctoral fellowship, CRI2453 (to PH).
