Imperial College London
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Dr Ellie Sherrard-Smith

Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health

Advanced Research Fellow
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 3229e.sherrard-smith

 
 
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Location

 

G27Praed StreetSt Mary's Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Sherrard-Smith:2017:10.1186/s12936-017-1782-3,
author = {Sherrard-Smith, E and Churcher, TS and Upton, LM and Sala, KA and Zakutansky, SE and Slater, HC and Blagborough, AM and Betancourt, M},
doi = {10.1186/s12936-017-1782-3},
journal = {Malaria Journal},
title = {A novel model itted to multiple life stages of malaria for assessing eicacy of transmission-blocking interventions},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-017-1782-3},
volume = {16},
year = {2017}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - BackgroundTransmission-blocking interventions (TBIs) aim to eliminate malaria by reducing transmission of the parasite between the host and the invertebrate vector. TBIs include transmission-blocking drugs and vaccines that, when given to humans, are taken up by mosquitoes and inhibit parasitic development within the vector. Accurate methodologies are key to assess TBI efficacy to ensure that only the most potent candidates progress to expensive and time-consuming clinical trials. Measuring intervention efficacy can be problematic because there is substantial variation in the number of parasites in both the host and vector populations, which can impact transmission even in laboratory settings.MethodsA statistically robust empirical method is introduced for estimating intervention efficacy from standardised population assay experiments. This method will be more reliable than simple summary statistics as it captures changes in parasite density in different life-stages. It also allows efficacy estimates at a finer resolution than previous methods enabling the impact of the intervention over successive generations to be tracked. A major advantage of the new methodology is that it makes no assumptions on the population dynamics of infection. This enables both host-to-vector and vector-to-host transmission to be density-dependent (or other) processes and generates easy-to-understand estimates of intervention efficacy.ResultsThis method increases the precision of intervention efficacy estimates and demonstrates that relying on changes in infection prevalence (the proportion of infected hosts) alone may be insufficient to capture the impact of TBIs, which also suppress parasite density in secondarily infected hosts.ConclusionsThe method indicates that potentially useful, partially effective TBIs may require multiple infection cycles before substantial reductions in prevalence are observed, despite more rapidly suppressing parasite density. Accurate models to quantify effica
AU  - Sherrard-Smith,E
AU  - Churcher,TS
AU  - Upton,LM
AU  - Sala,KA
AU  - Zakutansky,SE
AU  - Slater,HC
AU  - Blagborough,AM
AU  - Betancourt,M
DO  - 10.1186/s12936-017-1782-3
PY  - 2017///
SN  - 1475-2875
TI  - A novel model itted to multiple life stages of malaria for assessing eicacy of transmission-blocking interventions
T2  - Malaria Journal
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-017-1782-3
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/45695
VL  - 16
ER  -
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