Abstracts
Recent developments in identifying transmission routes of healthcare associated infections using whole genome sequence data
Healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) remain a problem worldwide, and can cause severe illness and death. It is estimated that 5-10% of acute-care patients are affected by nosocomial infections in developed countries, with higher levels in developing countries. Statistical modelling has played a significant role in increasing understanding of HCAI transmission dynamics. For instance, many studies have investigated the dynamics of MRSA transmission in hospitals, estimating transmission rates and the effectiveness of various infection control measures. However, uncertainty about the true routes of transmission remains and that is reflected on the uncertainty of parameters governing transmission.
Until recently, the collection of whole genome sequence (WGS) data for bacterial organisms has been prohibitively complex and expensive. However, technological advances and falling costs mean that DNA sequencing is becoming feasible on a larger scale.
In this talk we first describe how to construct statistical models which incorporate WGS data with regular HCAIs surveillance data (admission/discharge dates etc) to describe the pathogen's transmission dynamics in a hospital ward. Then, we show how one can fit such models to data within a Bayesian framework accounting for unobserved colonisation times and imperfect screening sensitivity using efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms. Finally, we illustrate the proposed methodology using MRSA surveillance data collected from a hospital in North-East Thailand.
Modelling the spread of American foulbrood in honeybees
We investigate the spread of American foulbrood (AFB), a disease caused by the bacterium Paenibacillus larvae, that affects bees and can be extremely damaging to beehives. Our dataset comes from an inspection period carried out during an AFB epidemic of honeybee colonies on the island of Jersey during the summer of 2010. The data include the number of hives of honeybees, location and owner of honeybee apiaries across the island. We use a spatial SIR model with an underlying owner network to simulate the epidemic and characterize the epidemic using a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) scheme to determine model parameters and infection times (including undetected ‘occult’ infections). Likely methods of infection spread can be inferred from the analysis, with both distance- and owner-based transmissions being found to contribute to the spread of AFB. The results of the MCMC are corroborated by simulating the epidemic using a stochastic SIR model, resulting in aggregate levels of infection that are comparable to the data. We use this stochastic SIR model to simulate the impact of different control strategies on controlling the epidemic. It is found that earlier inspections result in smaller epidemics and a higher likelihood of AFB extinction.
ABC for epidemic models
Inference in epidemic models poses many challenges, not least because interest often lies in fitting continuous-time dynamic models to missing and censored (e.g. discrete) data. The Bayesian framework and data-augmented MCMC algorithms provide powerful methods for fitting such models, though these techniques can become computationally infeasible for some large-scale models. Here we present some work exploring the use of Approximate Bayesian Computation for inference in dynamic epidemic models, where calculation of the likelihood is replaced by approximations based on model simulations. We illustrate the utility of these techniques on a large-scale within-herd transmission model of bovine tuberculosis in the British national herd. We discuss the benefits and challenges of ABC in the context of epidemic modelling."