Results
- Showing results for:
- Reset all filters
Search results
-
Journal articleGeng L, Whittles LK, Dickens BL, et al., 2025,
Potential public health impacts of gonorrhea vaccination programmes under declining incidences: A modeling study
, PLOS Medicine, Vol: 22, Pages: e1004521-e1004521<jats:sec id="sec014"><jats:title>Background</jats:title><jats:p>Gonorrhea is the second most common sexually transmitted disease notified in Singapore in 2023. Evidence suggests that the 4CMenB vaccine designed to protect against <jats:italic>Neisseria meningitidis</jats:italic> infection may offer partial cross-protection against gonorrhea. This generated interest in using 4CMenB for the purpose of staving gonorrhea transmission. We explored the efficacy of potential gonorrhea vaccination strategies in the context of historically declining gonorrhea incidence.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec id="sec015"><jats:title>Methods and findings</jats:title><jats:p>We employed an integrated transmission-dynamic model, calibrated using Bayesian methods to local surveillance data to understand the potential public health impact of 4CMenB in reducing gonorrhea acquisition and transmission in men who have sex with men (MSM) in Singapore. We explored the efficacy of implementing six vaccination programmes: (<jats:bold>1</jats:bold>) offering vaccination to all male adolescents in schools (vaccination before entry [VbE]), (<jats:bold>2</jats:bold>) offering vaccination to individuals attending sexual health clinics for testing (vaccination on attendance [VoA]), (<jats:bold>3</jats:bold>) offering vaccination to individuals attending sexual health clinics and who were diagnosed with gonorrhea (vaccination on diagnosis [VoD]), or (<jats:bold>4</jats:bold>) vaccination according to risk (VaR), by offering vaccination to patients who were diagnosed with gonorrhea plus individuals who tested negative, but report having more than five sexual partners per year. We further examined how altering (<jats:bold>5</jats:bold>) VoA and (<jats:bold>6</jats:bold>) VoD strategies changed if the strategies only targeted high risk groups (Vo
-
Journal articleOkumu F, Moore SJ, Selvaraj P, et al., 2025,
Elevating larval source management as a key strategy for controlling malaria and other vector-borne diseases in Africa.
, Parasit Vectors, Vol: 18Larval source management (LSM) has a long history of advocacy and successes but is rarely adopted where funds are limited. The World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on malaria prevention recommend the use of LSM as a supplementary intervention to the core vector control methods (insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying), arguing that its feasibility in many settings can be limited by larval habitats being numerous, transient, and difficult to find or treat. Another key argument is that there is insufficient high-quality evidence for its effectiveness to support wide-scale implementation. However, the stagnation of progress towards malaria elimination demands that we consider additional options to the current emphasis on insecticidal commodities targeting adult mosquitoes inside homes. This letter is the result of a global, crossdisciplinary collaboration comprising: (a) detailed online expert discussions, (b) a narrative review of countries that have eliminated local malaria transmission, and (c) a mathematical modeling exercise using two different approaches. Together, these efforts culminated in seven key recommendations for elevating larval source management as a strategy for controlling malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases in Africa (Box 1). LSM encompasses the use of larvicide (a commodity) as well as various environmental sanitation measures. Together, these efforts lead to the long-term reduction of mosquito populations, which benefits the entire community by controlling both disease vector and nuisance mosquitoes. In this paper, we argue that the heavy reliance on large-scale cluster-randomized controlled trials (CRTs) to generate evidence on epidemiological endpoints restricts the recommendation of approaches to only those interventions that can be measured by functional units and deliver relatively uniform impact and, therefore, are more likely to receive financial support for conducting these trials. The explicit impacts of LSM
-
Journal articleVillaveces A, Chen Y, Tucker S, et al., 2025,
Orphanhood and caregiver death among children in the United States by all-cause mortality, 2000-2021
, Nature Medicine, Vol: 31, Pages: 672-683, ISSN: 1078-8956Deaths of parents and grandparent caregivers threaten child well-being owing to losses of care, financial support, safety and family stability, but are relatively unrecognized as a public health crisis. Here we used cause-specific vital statistics death registrations in a modeling approach to estimate the full magnitude of orphanhood incidence and prevalence among US children aged 0–17 years between 2000 and 2021 by cause, child age, race and ethnicity, sex of deceased parent and state, and also accounted for grandparent caregiver loss using population survey data. In 2021, we estimate that 2.91 million children (4.2% of children) had in their lifetime experienced prevalent orphanhood and caregiver death combined, with incidence increasing by 49.5% and prevalence by 7.9% since 2000. Populations disproportionately affected by orphanhood included 5.2% of all adolescents; 6.4% and 4.7%, respectively, of non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native, and non-Hispanic Black children; and children in southern and eastern states. In 2021, drug overdose was the leading cause of orphanhood among non-Hispanic white children, but not among minoritized subgroups. Effective policies and programs to support nearly three million bereaved children are needed to reduce the acute and long-term negative effects of orphanhood.
-
Journal articleHuong NHT, Toan ND, Khanh TH, et al., 2025,
A cost of illness analysis of children with encephalitis presenting to a major hospital in Vietnam
, American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Vol: 112, Pages: 422-430, ISSN: 0002-9637Encephalitis is a significant global health problem, especially in children. Knowledge of its economic burden is essential for policymakers in prioritizing the development and implementation of interventions but remains limited. An observational study was prospectively conducted at a major children’s hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, from 2020 to 2022. Data on direct medical costs, direct non-medical costs and productivity costs were collected alongside demographic information, clinical features, diagnosis, severity, and outcomes of study participants. This was used to undertake a cost of illness analysis from a societal perspective. Data were collected from a total of 164 pediatric patients. The median cost of illness was estimated at US$1,859 (interquartile range (IQR), US$1,273–US$3,128). The direct costs were the main cost driver, accounting for 83.9% of the total cost of illness (US$1,560 (IQR: US$975–US$2,460)). The productivity costs accounted for a median of US$275 (IQR, US$154–US$474). The cost of illness was higher in more severe patients, patients with sequelae, patients with morbidities, and ventilated patients. Most of direct medical costs attributed to hospitalization and resulted in out-of-pocket payments from the patient’s family (30.2%, US$316). The results showed that the cost of illness of encephalitis in children is considerable and will be useful for policymakers in prioritizing resources for the development and implementation of intervention strategies to reduce the burden of pediatric encephalitis.
-
Thesis dissertationCharles G, 2025,
Neural network based surrogates for scalable Bayesian inference on a complex malaria model
-
Journal articleLi A, Coffey LL, Mohr EL, et al., 2025,
Role of non-human primate models in accelerating research and developing countermeasures against Zika virus infection
, The Lancet Microbe, Pages: 101030-101030, ISSN: 2666-5247 -
Journal articleHozé N, Pons-Salort M, Metcalf CJE, et al., 2025,
RSero: A user-friendly R package to reconstruct pathogen circulation history from seroprevalence studies.
, PLoS Comput Biol, Vol: 21Population-based serological surveys are a key tool in epidemiology to characterize the level of population immunity and reconstruct the past circulation of pathogens. A variety of serocatalytic models have been developed to estimate the force of infection (FOI) (i.e., the rate at which susceptible individuals become infected) from age-stratified seroprevalence data. However, few tool currently exists to easily implement, combine, and compare these models. Here, we introduce an R package, Rsero, that implements a series of serocatalytic models and estimates the FOI from age-stratified seroprevalence data using Bayesian methods. The package also contains a series of features to perform model comparison and visualise model fit. We introduce new serocatalytic models of successive outbreaks and extend existing models of seroreversion to any transmission model. The different features of the package are illustrated with simulated and real-life data. We show we can identify the correct epidemiological scenario and recover model parameters in different epidemiological settings. We also show how the package can support serosurvey study design in a variety of epidemic situations. This package provides a standard framework to epidemiologists and modellers to study the dynamics of past pathogen circulation from cross-sectional serological survey data.
-
Journal articleCurran-Sebastian J, Andersen FM, Bhatt S, 2025,
Modelling the stochastic importation dynamics and establishment of novel pathogenic strains using a general branching processes framework
, MATHEMATICAL BIOSCIENCES, Vol: 380, ISSN: 0025-5564 -
Journal articleOstrowsky JT, Katzelnick LC, Bourne N, et al., 2025,
Zika virus vaccines and monoclonal antibodies: a priority agenda for research and development
, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, ISSN: 1473-3099 -
Journal articleLackritz EM, Ng L-C, Marques ETA, et al., 2025,
Zika virus: advancing a priority research agenda for preparedness and response
, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, ISSN: 1473-3099
This data is extracted from the Web of Science and reproduced under a licence from Thomson Reuters. You may not copy or re-distribute this data in whole or in part without the written consent of the Science business of Thomson Reuters.
Contact us
For any enquiries related to the MRC Centre please contact:
Scientific Manager
Susannah Fisher
mrc.gida@imperial.ac.uk
External Relationships and Communications Manager
Dr Sabine van Elsland
s.van-elsland@imperial.ac.uk