Using simulation to aid trial design: Ring-vaccination trials.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The 2014-6 West African Ebola epidemic highlights the need for rigorous, rapid clinical trial methods for vaccines. A challenge for trial design is making sample size calculations based on incidence within the trial, total vaccine effect, and intracluster correlation, when these parameters are uncertain in the presence of indirect effects of vaccination.

Methods and findings

We present a stochastic, compartmental model for a ring vaccination trial. After identification of an index case, a ring of contacts is recruited and either vaccinated immediately or after 21 days. The primary outcome of the trial is total vaccine effect, counting cases only from a pre-specified window in which the immediate arm is assumed to be fully protected and the delayed arm is not prote

SUBMITTER: Hitchings MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5378415 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature