Lo Iacono, G;
Cunningham, AA;
Fichet-Calvet, E;
Garry, RF;
Grant, DS;
Leach, M;
Moses, LM;
... Wood, JLN; + view all
(2016)
A Unified Framework for the Infection Dynamics of Zoonotic Spillover and Spread.
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
, 10
(9)
, Article e0004957. 10.1371/journal.pntd.0004957.
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Abstract
A considerable amount of disease is transmitted from animals to humans and many of these zoonoses are neglected tropical diseases. As outbreaks of SARS, avian influenza and Ebola have demonstrated, however, zoonotic diseases are serious threats to global public health and are not just problems confined to remote regions. There are two fundamental, and poorly studied, stages of zoonotic disease emergence: ‘spillover’, i.e. transmission of pathogens from animals to humans, and ‘stuttering transmission’, i.e. when limited human-to-human infections occur, leading to self-limiting chains of transmission. We developed a transparent, theoretical framework, based on a generalization of Poisson processes with memory of past human infections, that unifies these stages. Once we have quantified pathogen dynamics in the reservoir, with some knowledge of the mechanism of contact, the approach provides a tool to estimate the likelihood of spillover events. Comparisons with independent agent-based models demonstrates the ability of the framework to correctly estimate the relative contributions of human-to-human vs animal transmission. As an illustrative example, we applied our model to Lassa fever, a rodent-borne, viral haemorrhagic disease common in West Africa, for which data on human outbreaks were available. The approach developed here is general and applicable to a range of zoonoses. This kind of methodology is of crucial importance for the scientific, medical and public health communities working at the interface between animal and human diseases to assess the risk associated with the disease and to plan intervention and appropriate control measures. The Lassa case study revealed important knowledge gaps, and opportunities, arising from limited knowledge of the temporal patterns in reporting, abundance of and infection prevalence in, the host reservoir.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A Unified Framework for the Infection Dynamics of Zoonotic Spillover and Spread |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pntd.0004957 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0004957 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2016 Lo Iacono et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | Zoonoses, Rodents, Lassa fever, Zoonotic pathogens, Pathogens, Infectious disease control, Public and occupational health, Host-pathogen interactions |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1522418 |
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