论文标题
病毒载荷在疾病传播链中的相关性可能会偏向繁殖数的早期估计
Correlation of viral loads in disease transmission chains could bias early estimates of the reproduction number
论文作者
论文摘要
对新出现的病原体传播特性的早期估计对于有效的公共卫生反应至关重要，并且通常基于有限的爆发数据。在这里，我们使用模拟来研究此类估计的潜在偏见来源，这是由于传输链中病毒载荷之间的相关性引起的。我们表明，这种机制可以影响表征病毒传播的基本传播特性的估计。我们的计算模型模拟了一种疾病传播机制，在这种机制中，传播时感染者的病毒负荷会影响感染者的传染性。传输对中的这些相关性产生了种群水平的破坏过程，在此过程中，随后每一代中初始病毒载荷的分布会融合到稳态。我们发现，初始病毒载荷低的指数病例引起的爆发会导致对遭受较大偏见的传输特性的早期估计。这些发现证明了传播力学引起的偏差的潜力，以影响新出现的病毒传播特性的估计。
Early estimates of the transmission properties of a newly emerged pathogen are critical to an effective public health response, and are often based on limited outbreak data. Here, we use simulations to investigate a potential source of bias in such estimates, arising from correlations between the viral load of cases in transmission chains. We show that this mechanism can affect estimates of fundamental transmission properties characterising the spread of a virus. Our computational model simulates a disease transmission mechanism in which the viral load of the infector at the time of transmission influences the infectiousness of the infectee. These correlations in transmission pairs produce a population-level decoherence process during which the distributions of initial viral loads in each subsequent generation converge to a steady state. We find that outbreaks arising from index cases with low initial viral loads give rise to early estimates of transmission properties that are subject to large biases. These findings demonstrate the potential for bias arising from transmission mechanics to affect estimates of the transmission properties of newly emerged viruses.
