Summary
My work focuses on modelling the population dynamics of soil transmitted helminths and schistosomes. With the recent advent of large-scale donations of anthelminthic drugs from pharmaceutical companies, it is essential to understand the impact of different regimes of mass drug administration on the parasite burden of populations. In particular, how the degree of control or the possibility of elimination depend on whom the drugs are targetted at and how frequently. My work involves analysis of simple mathematica models as well as simulation using age-structured models and stochastic individual (worm) based approaches. Helminths are characterised by a high degree of variability in their distribution among hosts and reproductive behaviour and the techniques of data collection are also prone to error. My aim is to develop Baysian techniques to properly integrate parameter and biological uncertainty into the models and hence give realistic confidence intervals on model output.
Publications
Journals
Truscott JE, Dunn JC, Papaiakovou M, et al., 2019, Calculating the prevalence of soil-transmitted helminth infection through pooling of stool samples: Choosing and optimizing the pooling strategy., Plos Negl Trop Dis, Vol:13
Truscott JE, Werkman M, Wright JE, et al., 2017, Identifying optimal threshold statistics for elimination of hookworm using a stochastic simulation model, Parasites & Vectors, Vol:10, ISSN:1756-3305
Truscott JE, Gurarie D, Alsallaq R, et al., 2017, A comparison of two mathematical models of the impact of mass drug administration on the transmission and control of schistosomiasis, Epidemics, Vol:18, ISSN:1755-4365, Pages:29-37
Turner HC, Truscott JE, Bettis AA, et al., 2015, An economic evaluation of expanding hookworm control strategies to target the whole community, Parasites & Vectors, Vol:8, ISSN:1756-3305
Anderson RM, Turner HC, Farrell SH, et al., 2015, What is required in terms of mass drug administration to interrupt the transmission of schistosome parasites in regions of endemic infection?, Parasites & Vectors, Vol:8, ISSN:1756-3305