Bayesian inference of hospital-acquired infectious diseases and control measures given imperfect surveillance data

Forrester, Marie L. and Pettitt, Anthony N. and Gibson, Gavin J. (2007) Bayesian inference of hospital-acquired infectious diseases and control measures given imperfect surveillance data. Biostatistics 8(2):pp. 383-401.

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Abstract

This paper describes a stochastic epidemic model developed to infer transmission rates of asymptomatic communicable pathogens within a hospital ward. Inference is complicated by partial observation of the epidemic process and dependencies within the data. The epidemic process of nosocomial communicable pathogens can be partially observed by routine swabs testing for the presence of the pathogen. False negative swab results must be accounted for and make it difficult to ascertain the number of patients who were colonised. Reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are used within a Bayesian framework to make inferences about the colonisation rates and unknown colonisation times. The methods are applied to routinely collected data concerning methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus in an intensive care unit to estimate the effectiveness of isolation on reducing transmission of the bacterium.

Item Type:	Journal Article
RM Number:	2007003695
Status:	Published
Keywords:	Bayesian inference; Markov chain Monte Carlo methods; reversible jump methods; stochastic epidemic models; infectious diseases; Staphylococcus aureus; MRSA; imperfect detectability; sensitivity; false negatives; screening
Subjects:	230000 Mathematical Sciences > 230200 Statistics > 230204 Applied Statistics
ID Code:	7868
Deposited By:	Conlon, Kylie
Deposited On:	18 June 2007
Alternative Locations:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/biostatistics/kxl017
Copyright Owner:	Copyright 2007 (The authors): Licensed to Oxford University Press
Copyright Statement:	This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an Biostatistics article accepted for publication in following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Forrester, M. L. and Pettitt, A. N. (2007) Bayesian inference of hospital-acquired infectious diseases and control measures given imperfect surveillance data. Biostatistics 8(2):pp. 383-401 is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/biostatistics/kxl017.