Seasonality and within-subject clustering of rotavirus infections in an eight-site birth cohort study.
Epidemiol Infect
; 146(6): 688-697, 2018 04.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-29534766
ABSTRACT
Improving understanding of the pathogen-specific seasonality of enteric infections is critical to informing policy on the timing of preventive measures and to forecast trends in the burden of diarrhoeal disease. Data obtained from active surveillance of cohorts can capture the underlying infection status as transmission occurs in the community. The purpose of this study was to characterise rotavirus seasonality in eight different locations while adjusting for age, calendar time and within-subject clustering of episodes by applying an adapted Serfling model approach to data from a multi-site cohort study. In the Bangladesh and Peru sites, within-subject clustering was high, with more than half of infants who experienced one rotavirus infection going on to experience a second and more than 20% experiencing a third. In the five sites that are in countries that had not introduced the rotavirus vaccine, the model predicted a primary peak in prevalence during the dry season and, in three of these, a secondary peak during the rainy season. The patterns predicted by this approach are broadly congruent with several emerging hypotheses about rotavirus transmission and are consistent for both symptomatic and asymptomatic rotavirus episodes. These findings have practical implications for programme design, but caution should be exercised in deriving inferences about the underlying pathways driving these trends, particularly when extending the approach to other pathogens.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Rotavirus Infections
/
Seasons
/
Cluster Analysis
/
Disease Transmission, Infectious
Type of study:
Etiology_studies
/
Incidence_studies
/
Observational_studies
/
Prevalence_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Child, preschool
/
Humans
/
Infant
/
Newborn
Country/Region as subject:
Africa
/
America do sul
/
Asia
Language:
En
Journal:
Epidemiol Infect
Journal subject:
DOENCAS TRANSMISSIVEIS
/
EPIDEMIOLOGIA
Year:
2018
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States