Adapting Back-calculation Methods to Estimate the Incidence of Tuberculosis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Despite being the leading cause of death, the global tuberculosis (TB) burden is ill-defined. Existing methods to estimate incidence are time and/or resource-intensive and often inaccurate. Back-calculation was developed to estimate HIV incidence by considering reported cases to be a convolution of the disease duration and the incidence of new cases. New estimates of TB natural history parameters allow us to develop Bayesian back-calculation methods for TB to assign case notification data to the time point of onset of disease.

Methods

Recorded counts of TB cases are underestimates of the true burden of disease, so we include a multiplier derived from prevalence to notification ratios to account for underreporting. We assume a Poisson distribution for notifications

SUBMITTER: Shapiro AN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12851544 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature