Opportunities for improved surveillance and control of dengue from age-specific case data
- University of California, San Francisco, United States
- Institut Pasteur, France
- University of Florida, United States
Abstract
One of the challenges faced by global disease surveillance efforts is the lack of comparability across systems. Reporting commonly focuses on overall incidence, despite differences in surveillance quality between and within countries. For most immunizing infections, the age distribution of incident cases provides a more robust picture of trends in transmission. We present a framework to estimate transmission intensity for dengue virus from age-specific incidence data, and apply it to 359 administrative units in Thailand, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico. Our estimates correlate well with those derived from seroprevalence data (the gold standard), capture the expected spatial heterogeneity in risk, and correlate with known environmental drivers of transmission. We show how this approach could be used to guide the implementation of control strategies such as vaccination. Since age-specific counts are routinely collected by many surveillance systems, they represent a unique opportunity to further our understanding of disease burden and risk for many diseases.
Data availability
The code to implement the model described in our study is available at https://github.com/isabelrodbar/dengue_foi. The case data used for the analyses is publicly available and can be accessed through the following links links: Brazil- http://tabnet.datasus.gov.br/cgi/deftohtm.exe?sih/cnv/mruf.def; Thailand - http://www.boe.moph.go.th/boedb/surdata/index.php; Colombia - http://www.ins.gov.co/lineas-de-accion/Subdireccion-Vigilancia/sivigila/Paginas/vigilancia-rutinaria.aspxand https://www.sispro.gov.co/Pages/Home.aspx; Mexico - http://www.epidemiologia.salud.gob.mx/anuario/html/anuarios.html.
Article and author information
Author details
Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer
Funding
National Institutes of Health (R01AI114703-01)
- Derek A Cummings
European Research Council (804744)
- Henrik Salje
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Jos WM van der Meer, Radboud University Medical Centre, Netherlands
Version history
- Received: January 24, 2019
- Accepted: May 21, 2019
- Accepted Manuscript published: May 23, 2019 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: June 17, 2019 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2019, Rodriguez-Barraquer et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Opportunities for improved surveillance and control of dengue from age-specific case data
eLife 8:e45474.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.45474
Further reading
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- Epidemiology and Global Health
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- Epidemiology and Global Health
Background:
Circulating omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have been associated with various chronic diseases and mortality, but results are conflicting. Few studies examined the role of omega-6/omega-3 ratio in mortality.
Methods:
We investigated plasma omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs and their ratio in relation to all-cause and cause-specific mortality in a large prospective cohort, the UK Biobank. Of 85,425 participants who had complete information on circulating PUFAs, 6461 died during follow-up, including 2794 from cancer and 1668 from cardiovascular disease (CVD). Associations were estimated by multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression with adjustment for relevant risk factors.
Results:
Risk for all three mortality outcomes increased as the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 PUFAs increased (all Ptrend <0.05). Comparing the highest to the lowest quintiles, individuals had 26% (95% CI, 15–38%) higher total mortality, 14% (95% CI, 0–31%) higher cancer mortality, and 31% (95% CI, 10–55%) higher CVD mortality. Moreover, omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs in plasma were all inversely associated with all-cause, cancer, and CVD mortality, with omega-3 showing stronger effects.
Conclusions:
Using a population-based cohort in UK Biobank, our study revealed a strong association between the ratio of circulating omega-6/omega-3 PUFAs and the risk of all-cause, cancer, and CVD mortality.
Funding:
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institute of Health under the award number R35GM143060 (KY). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
