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Time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19
BACKGROUND: Time variations in transmission potential have rarely been examined with regard to pandemic influenza. This paper reanalyzes the temporal distribution of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 using the daily numbers of deaths, which totaled 8911 from 29 September 1918 to 1...
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2007
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892008/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17547753 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-4682-4-20 |
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author | Nishiura, Hiroshi |
author_facet | Nishiura, Hiroshi |
author_sort | Nishiura, Hiroshi |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Time variations in transmission potential have rarely been examined with regard to pandemic influenza. This paper reanalyzes the temporal distribution of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 using the daily numbers of deaths, which totaled 8911 from 29 September 1918 to 1 February 1919, and the distribution of the time delay from onset to death in order to estimate the effective reproduction number, Rt, defined as the actual average number of secondary cases per primary case at a given time. RESULTS: A discrete-time branching process was applied to back-calculated incidence data, assuming three different serial intervals (i.e. 1, 3 and 5 days). The estimated reproduction numbers exhibited a clear association between the estimates and choice of serial interval; i.e. the longer the assumed serial interval, the higher the reproduction number. Moreover, the estimated reproduction numbers did not decline monotonically with time, indicating that the patterns of secondary transmission varied with time. These tendencies are consistent with the differences in estimates of the reproduction number of pandemic influenza in recent studies; high estimates probably originate from a long serial interval and a model assumption about transmission rate that takes no account of time variation and is applied to the entire epidemic curve. CONCLUSION: The present findings suggest that in order to offer robust assessments it is critically important to clarify in detail the natural history of a disease (e.g. including the serial interval) as well as heterogeneous patterns of transmission. In addition, given that human contact behavior probably influences transmissibility, individual countermeasures (e.g. household quarantine and mask-wearing) need to be explored to construct effective non-pharmaceutical interventions. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-1892008 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2007 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-18920082007-06-14 Time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 Nishiura, Hiroshi Theor Biol Med Model Research BACKGROUND: Time variations in transmission potential have rarely been examined with regard to pandemic influenza. This paper reanalyzes the temporal distribution of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 using the daily numbers of deaths, which totaled 8911 from 29 September 1918 to 1 February 1919, and the distribution of the time delay from onset to death in order to estimate the effective reproduction number, Rt, defined as the actual average number of secondary cases per primary case at a given time. RESULTS: A discrete-time branching process was applied to back-calculated incidence data, assuming three different serial intervals (i.e. 1, 3 and 5 days). The estimated reproduction numbers exhibited a clear association between the estimates and choice of serial interval; i.e. the longer the assumed serial interval, the higher the reproduction number. Moreover, the estimated reproduction numbers did not decline monotonically with time, indicating that the patterns of secondary transmission varied with time. These tendencies are consistent with the differences in estimates of the reproduction number of pandemic influenza in recent studies; high estimates probably originate from a long serial interval and a model assumption about transmission rate that takes no account of time variation and is applied to the entire epidemic curve. CONCLUSION: The present findings suggest that in order to offer robust assessments it is critically important to clarify in detail the natural history of a disease (e.g. including the serial interval) as well as heterogeneous patterns of transmission. In addition, given that human contact behavior probably influences transmissibility, individual countermeasures (e.g. household quarantine and mask-wearing) need to be explored to construct effective non-pharmaceutical interventions. BioMed Central 2007-06-04 /pmc/articles/PMC1892008/ /pubmed/17547753 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-4682-4-20 Text en Copyright © 2007 Nishiura; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Nishiura, Hiroshi Time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 |
title | Time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 |
title_full | Time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 |
title_fullStr | Time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 |
title_full_unstemmed | Time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 |
title_short | Time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 |
title_sort | time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in prussia, germany, from 1918–19 |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892008/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17547753 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-4682-4-20 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT nishiurahiroshi timevariationsinthetransmissibilityofpandemicinfluenzainprussiagermanyfrom191819 |