Estimating vaccine effects on Transmission of Infection from Household Data
Date
2003
Authors
Becker, Niels
Britton, Tom
O'Neill, Philip D
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
International Biometrics Society
Abstract
This article is concerned with a method for making inferences about various measures of vaccine efficacy. These measures describe reductions in susceptibility and in the potential to transmit infection. The method uses data on household outbreaks; it is based on a model that allows for transmission of infection both from within a household and from the outside. The use of household data is motivated by the hope that these are informative about vaccine-induced reduction of the potential to transmit infection, as household outbreaks contain some information about the possible source of infection. For illustration, the method is applied to observed data on household outbreaks of smallpox. These data are of the form needed and the number of households is of a size that can be managed in a vaccine trial. It is found that vaccine effects, such as the mean reduction in susceptibility and the mean reduction in the potential to infect others, per infectious contact, can be estimated with precision. However, a more specific parameter reflecting the reduction in infectivity for individuals partially responding to vaccination is not estimated well in the application. An evaluation of the method using artificial data shows that this parameter can be estimated with greater precision when we have outbreak data on a large number of small households.
Description
Keywords
Keywords: smallpox vaccine; vaccine; disease control; disease transmission; efficiency measurement; vaccination; article; clinical trial; contact examination; data analysis; disease predisposition; disease transmission; drug efficacy; household; human; infection; s Design of vaccine trials; Household outbreaks; Infectivity; Smallpox; Susceptibility to infection; Transmission of infection; Vaccine efficacy
Citation
Collections
Source
Biometrics
Type
Journal article
Book Title
Entity type
Access Statement
License Rights
Restricted until
2037-12-31
Downloads
File
Description