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Full-Text Articles in Biostatistics
The Battle Against Malaria: A Teachable Moment, Randy K. Schwartz
The Battle Against Malaria: A Teachable Moment, Randy K. Schwartz
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics
Malaria has been humanity’s worst public health problem throughout recorded history. Mathematical methods are needed to understand which factors are relevant to the disease and to develop counter-measures against it. This article and the accompanying exercises provide examples of those methods for use in lower- or upper-level courses dealing with probability, statistics, or population modeling. These can be used to illustrate such concepts as correlation, causation, conditional probability, and independence. The article explains how the apparent link between sickle cell trait and resistance to malaria was first verified in Uganda using the chi-squared probability distribution. It goes on to explain …
Interactions Between Serotypes Of Dengue Highlight Epidemiological Impact Of Cross-Immunity, Nicholas Reich, Sourya Shrestha, Aaron King, Pejman Rohani, Justin Lessler, Siripen Kalayanarooj, In-Kyu Yoon, Robert Gibbons, Donald Burke, Derek Cummings
Interactions Between Serotypes Of Dengue Highlight Epidemiological Impact Of Cross-Immunity, Nicholas Reich, Sourya Shrestha, Aaron King, Pejman Rohani, Justin Lessler, Siripen Kalayanarooj, In-Kyu Yoon, Robert Gibbons, Donald Burke, Derek Cummings
Nicholas G Reich
Dengue, a mosquito-borne virus of humans, infects over 50 million people annually. Infection with any of the four dengue serotypes induces protective immunity to that serotype, but does not confer long-term protection against infection by other serotypes. The immunological interactions between sero- types are of central importance in understanding epidemiological dynamics and anticipating the impact of dengue vaccines. We analysed a 38-year time series with 12 197 serotyped dengue infections from a hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. Using novel mechanistic models to represent different hypothesized immune interactions between serotypes, we found strong evidence that infec- tion with dengue provides substantial short-term …