Imperial College London
Alternate

ProfessorNicholasGrassly

Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health

Prof of Infectious Disease & Vaccine Epidemiology
 
 
 
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Contact

 

n.grassly Website

 
 
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Location

 

1102Sir Michael Uren HubWhite City Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Li:2017:molbev/msx195,
author = {Li, LM and Grassly, NC and Fraser, C},
doi = {molbev/msx195},
journal = {Molecular Biology and Evolution},
pages = {2982--2995},
title = {Quantifying Transmission Heterogeneity Using Both Pathogen Phylogenies and Incidence Time Series.},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx195},
volume = {34},
year = {2017}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Heterogeneity in individual-level transmissibility can be quantified by the dispersion parameter k of the offspring distribution. Quantifying heterogeneity is important as it affects other parameter estimates, it modulates the degree of unpredictability of an epidemic, and it needs to be accounted for in models of infection control. Aggregated data such as incidence time series are often not sufficiently informative to estimate k. Incorporating phylogenetic analysis can help to estimate k concurrently with other epidemiological parameters. We have developed an inference framework that uses particle Markov Chain Monte Carlo to estimate k and other epidemiological parameters using both incidence time series and the pathogen phylogeny. Using the framework to fit a modified compartmental transmission model that includes the parameter k to simulated data, we found that more accurate and less biased estimates of the reproductive number were obtained by combining epidemiological and phylogenetic analyses. However, k was most accurately estimated using pathogen phylogeny alone. Accurately estimating k was necessary for unbiased estimates of the reproductive number, but it did not affect the accuracy of reporting probability and epidemic start date estimates. We further demonstrated that inference was possible in the presence of phylogenetic uncertainty by sampling from the posterior distribution of phylogenies. Finally, we used the inference framework to estimate transmission parameters from epidemiological and genetic data collected during a poliovirus outbreak. Despite the large degree of phylogenetic uncertainty, we demonstrated that incorporating phylogenetic data in parameter inference improved the accuracy and precision of estimates.
AU  - Li,LM
AU  - Grassly,NC
AU  - Fraser,C
DO  - molbev/msx195
EP  - 2995
PY  - 2017///
SN  - 1537-1719
SP  - 2982
TI  - Quantifying Transmission Heterogeneity Using Both Pathogen Phylogenies and Incidence Time Series.
T2  - Molecular Biology and Evolution
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx195
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/53249
VL  - 34
ER  -
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