Inferring longitudinal patterns of group B Streptococcus colonization during pregnancy.

ABSTRACT: Maternal colonization by Group B Streptococcus (GBS) can lead to severe infection in neonates and has also been associated with prematurity and stillbirth. Better quantitative understanding of the trajectories of GBS carriage during pregnancy is essential for the design of informative epidemiological studies. Here, we describe analyses of published longitudinal data using Bayesian hidden Markov models, which involve the estimation of parameters related to the succession of latent states (infection status) and observations (culture positivity). In addition to quantifying infection acquisition and clearance probabilities, the statistical approach also suggests that for some longitudinal patterns of culture results, pregnant women were likely to have been GBS-colonized despite a negative diag

SUBMITTER: Goncalves BP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10391671 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature