ReviewComputational and mathematical methods in medicine2011
The failure of R0.
Review in Computational and mathematical methods in medicine, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Estimates of the reproduction number for seasonal, pandemic, and zoonotic influenza: a systematic review of the literature.BMC infectious diseases · 2014Pooled it
- Comparing the Risk of SARS-CoV-2 Immune Resistance Evolving Across Regions in the Americas with Differing Approaches to Public Health.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Estimating the effect of self-protection on transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in Germany in 2021: a modelling study.BMC public health · 2026Article
- TheCommunications physics · 2026Article
- Predictability of infectious disease outbreak severity: Chikungunya as a case study.Science advances · 2025Article
- Hotspot model shows how location-based superspreading accelerates and reshapes epidemics.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Endogenous competition and the underrealized reproduction of infectious diseases.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Epidemic evolutionarily stable strategies within an age-structured host population.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- A novel approach to forecasting reproduction numbers of spatiotemporal stochastic epidemic spread using a PDE-based model and real-time infection data.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- How Does Vaccine-Induced Immunity Compare to Infection-Acquired Immunity in the Dynamics of COVID-19?Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Mathematical modeling and simulation of hepatitis B transmission dynamics with passive immunity and control strategies.Heliyon · 2025Article
- Efficient modelling of infectious diseases in wildlife: A case study of bovine tuberculosis in wild badgers.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- In-host density-dependent model of high-risk HPV virions, basal cells, lymphocytes t-cells incorporating functional responses.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Article
- Herd immunity, vaccination and moral obligation.Journal of medical ethics · 2023Article
- Risk averse reproduction numbers improve resurgence detection.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Spatiotemporal reproduction number with Bayesian model selection for evaluation of emerging infectious disease transmissibility: an application to COVID-19 national surveillance data.BMC medical research methodology · 2023Article
- A discrete model for the evaluation of public policies: The case of Colombia during the COVID-19 pandemic.PloS one · 2023Article
- Ground reality versus model-based computation of basic reproductive numbers in epidemics.Journal of mathematical analysis and applications · 2022Article
- Spatial effects in parasite-induced marine diseases of immobile hosts.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The basic reproductive ratio, R(0), is one of the fundamental concepts in mathematical biology. It is a threshold parameter, intended to quantify the spread of disease by estimating the average number of secondary infections in a wholly susceptible population, giving an indication of the invasion strength of an epidemic: if R(0) < 1, the disease dies out, whereas if R(0) > 1, the disease persists. R(0) has been widely used as a measure of disease strength to estimate the effectiveness of control measures and to form the backbone of disease-management policy. However, in almost every aspect that matters, R(0) is flawed. Diseases can persist with R(0) < 1, while diseases with R(0) > 1 can die out. We show that the same model of malaria gives many different values of R(0), depending on the method used, with the sole common property that they have a threshold at 1. We also survey estimated values of R(0) for a variety of diseases, and examine some of the alternatives that have been proposed. If R(0) is to be used, it must be accompanied by caveats about the method of calculation, underlying model assumptions and evidence that it is actually a threshold. Otherwise, the concept is meaningless.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.