Modeling Missing Cases and Transmission Links in Networks of Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

ABSTRACT: Patterns of transmission of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) remain poorly understood, despite over half a million incident cases worldwide in 2017. Modeling TB transmission networks can provide insight into drivers of transmission, but incomplete sampling of TB cases can pose challenges for inference from individual epidemiologic and molecular data. We assessed the effect of missing cases on a transmission network inferred from Mycobacterium tuberculosis sequencing data on extensively drug-resistant TB cases in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, diagnosed in 2011-2014. We tested scenarios in which cases were missing at random, missing differentially by clinical characteristics, or missing differentially by transmission (i.e., cases with many links were under- or oversampled). Under the assumpti

SUBMITTER: Nelson KN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7443195 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature