ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2011
Explaining rapid reinfections in multiple-wave influenza outbreaks: Tristan da Cunha 1971 epidemic as a case study.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed.
- A 14-year influenza reinfection surveillance in Chongqing, China: A retrospective analysis.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2025Article
- The ghost of infections past: Accounting for heterogeneity in individual infection history improves accuracy in epidemic forecasting.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Adaptive human behavior and delays in information availability autonomously modulate epidemic waves.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- The 1978 English boarding school influenza outbreak: where the classic SEIR model fails.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Reconstructed influenza A/H3N2 infection histories reveal variation in incidence and antibody dynamics over the life course.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Modelling the unexpected dynamics of COVID-19 in Manaus, Brazil.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2024Article
- Reconstructed influenza A/H3N2 infection histories reveal variation in incidence and antibody dynamics over the life course.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Improving estimates of waning immunity rates in stochastic SIRS models with a hierarchical framework.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2023Article
- How effective were Australian Quarantine Stations in mitigating transmission aboard ships during the influenza pandemic of 1918-19?PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
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- Influenza A Reinfection in Sequential Human Challenge: Implications for Protective Immunity and "Universal" Vaccine Development.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2020Article
- Modeling and inference for infectious disease dynamics: a likelihood-based approach.Statistical science : a review journal of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics · 2018Article
- A second-order iterated smoothing algorithm.Statistics and computing · 2017Article
- Multiple Genome Constellations of Similar and Distinct Influenza A Viruses Co-Circulate in Pigs During Epidemic Events.Scientific reports · 2017Article
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- Monte Carlo profile confidence intervals for dynamic systems.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2017Article
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- Pattern transitions in spatial epidemics: Mechanisms and emergent properties.Physics of life reviews · 2016Review
- Estimating transmission probability in schools for the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic in Italy.Theoretical biology & medical modelling · 2016Article
- Fast and accurate dynamic estimation of field effectiveness of meningococcal vaccines.BMC medicine · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Influenza usually spreads through the human population in multiple-wave outbreaks. Successive reinfection of individuals over a short time interval has been explicitly reported during past pandemics. However, the causes of rapid reinfection and the role of reinfection in driving multiple-wave outbreaks remain poorly understood. To investigate these issues, we focus on a two-wave influenza A/H3N2 epidemic that occurred on the remote island of Tristan da Cunha in 1971. Over 59 days, 273 (96%) of 284 islanders experienced at least one attack and 92 (32%) experienced two attacks. We formulate six mathematical models invoking a variety of antigenic and immunological reinfection mechanisms. Using a maximum-likelihood analysis to confront model predictions with the reported incidence time series, we demonstrate that only two mechanisms can be retained: some hosts with either a delayed or deficient humoral immune response to the primary influenza infection were reinfected by the same strain, thus initiating the second epidemic wave. Both mechanisms are supported by previous empirical studies and may arise from a combination of genetic and ecological causes. We advocate that a better understanding and account of heterogeneity in the human immune response are essential to analysis of multiple-wave influenza outbreaks and pandemic planning.
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