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Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks

Current methods for the detection of contagious outbreaks give contemporaneous information about the course of an epidemic at best. It is known that individuals near the center of a social network are likely to be infected sooner during the course of an outbreak, on average, than those at the periph...

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Autores principales: Christakis, Nicholas A., Fowler, James H.
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939797/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20856792
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012948
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author Christakis, Nicholas A.
Fowler, James H.
author_facet Christakis, Nicholas A.
Fowler, James H.
author_sort Christakis, Nicholas A.
collection PubMed
description Current methods for the detection of contagious outbreaks give contemporaneous information about the course of an epidemic at best. It is known that individuals near the center of a social network are likely to be infected sooner during the course of an outbreak, on average, than those at the periphery. Unfortunately, mapping a whole network to identify central individuals who might be monitored for infection is typically very difficult. We propose an alternative strategy that does not require ascertainment of global network structure, namely, simply monitoring the friends of randomly selected individuals. Such individuals are known to be more central. To evaluate whether such a friend group could indeed provide early detection, we studied a flu outbreak at Harvard College in late 2009. We followed 744 students who were either members of a group of randomly chosen individuals or a group of their friends. Based on clinical diagnoses, the progression of the epidemic in the friend group occurred 13.9 days (95% C.I. 9.9–16.6) in advance of the randomly chosen group (i.e., the population as a whole). The friend group also showed a significant lead time (p<0.05) on day 16 of the epidemic, a full 46 days before the peak in daily incidence in the population as a whole. This sensor method could provide significant additional time to react to epidemics in small or large populations under surveillance. The amount of lead time will depend on features of the outbreak and the network at hand. The method could in principle be generalized to other biological, psychological, informational, or behavioral contagions that spread in networks.
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spelling pubmed-29397972010-09-20 Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks Christakis, Nicholas A. Fowler, James H. PLoS One Research Article Current methods for the detection of contagious outbreaks give contemporaneous information about the course of an epidemic at best. It is known that individuals near the center of a social network are likely to be infected sooner during the course of an outbreak, on average, than those at the periphery. Unfortunately, mapping a whole network to identify central individuals who might be monitored for infection is typically very difficult. We propose an alternative strategy that does not require ascertainment of global network structure, namely, simply monitoring the friends of randomly selected individuals. Such individuals are known to be more central. To evaluate whether such a friend group could indeed provide early detection, we studied a flu outbreak at Harvard College in late 2009. We followed 744 students who were either members of a group of randomly chosen individuals or a group of their friends. Based on clinical diagnoses, the progression of the epidemic in the friend group occurred 13.9 days (95% C.I. 9.9–16.6) in advance of the randomly chosen group (i.e., the population as a whole). The friend group also showed a significant lead time (p<0.05) on day 16 of the epidemic, a full 46 days before the peak in daily incidence in the population as a whole. This sensor method could provide significant additional time to react to epidemics in small or large populations under surveillance. The amount of lead time will depend on features of the outbreak and the network at hand. The method could in principle be generalized to other biological, psychological, informational, or behavioral contagions that spread in networks. Public Library of Science 2010-09-15 /pmc/articles/PMC2939797/ /pubmed/20856792 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012948 Text en Christakis, Fowler. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Christakis, Nicholas A.
Fowler, James H.
Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks
title Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks
title_full Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks
title_fullStr Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks
title_full_unstemmed Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks
title_short Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks
title_sort social network sensors for early detection of contagious outbreaks
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939797/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20856792
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012948
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