Inference of transmission dynamics and retrospective forecast of invasive meningococcal disease.

ABSTRACT: The pathogenic bacteria Neisseria meningitidis, which causes invasive meningococcal disease (IMD), predominantly colonizes humans asymptomatically; however, invasive disease occurs in a small proportion of the population. Here, we explore the seasonality of IMD and develop and validate a suite of models for simulating and forecasting disease outcomes in the United States. We combine the models into multi-model ensembles (MME) based on the past performance of the individual models, as well as a naive equally weighted aggregation, and compare the retrospective forecast performance over a six-month forecast horizon. Deployment of the complete vaccination regimen, introduced in 2011, coincided with a change in the periodicity of IMD, suggesting altered transmission dynamics. We found that a mo

SUBMITTER: Cascante-Vega J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10655980 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature