Juliana Taube, a student at Bowdoin College, worked with Paige Miller and Dr. John Drake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abstract: Transmission trees contain valuable\ndetails about who infected whom in infectious disease outbreaks. We created a\ndatabase with 81 published, standardized transmission trees consisting of 12 directly-transmitted\npathogens (mostly viruses). We also demonstrated how the database could be used\nto help answer research questions in infectious disease epidemiology. First, we\nanalyzed overall and pathogen-specific patterns between tree parameters (R0 <\/sub>and\nvariation in secondary infections). We found that outbreak size is nonlinearly\nassociated with R0 <\/sub>and the dispersion parameter, but emphasize\nthat pathogen-specific patterns and intervention efforts may alter theoretical\nrelationships between these variables. Second, we examined how superspreader\ncontribution to onward transmission, either directly or through their tree\ndescendants, varies across pathogens. Superspreaders were responsible for most\ncases via their descendants and the number of superspreaders varied across\npathogens. Additional database exploration matched theory1 <\/sup>about\nhow the proportion of superspreaders increases at intermediate levels of\ndispersion, an idea that should be further explored. We hope that our database\nwill assist both theoretical and applied infectious disease epidemiology\nresearch in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Juliana Taube, a student at Bowdoin College, worked with Paige Miller and Dr. John Drake. Abstract: Transmission trees contain valuable details about who infected whom in infectious disease outbreaks. We created a database with 81 published, standardized transmission trees consisting of 12 directly-transmitted pathogens (mostly viruses). We also demonstrated how the database could be used<\/p>\n
\n1. Lloyd-Smith, JO, Schreiber, SJ, Kopp, PE, & Getz, WM (2005)\n\u201cSuperspreading and the effect of individual variation on disease emergence.\u201dNature<\/em>, 438(<\/strong>7066):\n355.
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