Evidence map›Paper›PMID 26793189›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in microbiology2015

Individual-Based Modeling of Tuberculosis in a User-Friendly Interface: Understanding the Epidemiological Role of Population Heterogeneity in a City.

Clara Prats, Cristina Montañola-Sales, Joan F Gilabert-Navarro, Joaquim Valls, Josep Casanovas-Garcia, Cristina Vilaplana, Pere-Joan Cardona, Daniel López

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in microbiology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors.

Clara PratsDepartament de Física, Escola Superior d'Agricultura de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech Barcelona, Spain.
Cristina Montañola-SalesDepartament d'Estadística i Investigació Operativa, Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC-CNS) Barcelona, Spain.
Joan F Gilabert-NavarroDepartament d'Estadística i Investigació Operativa, Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC-CNS) Barcelona, Spain.
Joaquim VallsDepartament de Física, Escola Superior d'Agricultura de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech Barcelona, Spain.
Josep Casanovas-GarciaDepartament d'Estadística i Investigació Operativa, Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC-CNS) Barcelona, Spain.
Cristina VilaplanaUnitat de Tuberculosi Experimental, Fundació Institut d'Investigació en Ciències de la Salut Germans Trias i Pujol, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Badalona, Spain.
Pere-Joan CardonaUnitat de Tuberculosi Experimental, Fundació Institut d'Investigació en Ciències de la Salut Germans Trias i Pujol, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Badalona, Spain.
Daniel LópezDepartament de Física, Escola Superior d'Agricultura de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech Barcelona, Spain.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

For millennia tuberculosis (TB) has shown a successful strategy to survive, making it one of the world's deadliest infectious diseases. This resilient behavior is based not only on remaining hidden in most of the infected population, but also by showing slow evolution in most sick people. The course of the disease within a population is highly related to its heterogeneity. Thus, classic epidemiological approaches with a top-down perspective have not succeeded in understanding its dynamics. In the past decade a few individual-based models were built, but most of them preserved a top-down view that makes it difficult to study a heterogeneous population. We propose an individual-based model developed with a bottom-up approach to studying the dynamics of pulmonary TB in a certain population, considered constant. Individuals may belong to the following classes: healthy, infected, sick, under treatment, and treated with a probability of relapse. Several variables and parameters account for their age, origin (native or immigrant), immunodeficiency, diabetes, and other risk factors (smoking and alcoholism). The time within each infection state is controlled, and sick individuals may show a cavitated disease or not that conditions infectiousness. It was implemented in NetLogo because it allows non-modelers to perform virtual experiments with a user-friendly interface. The simulation was conducted with data from Ciutat Vella, a district of Barcelona with an incidence of 67 TB cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013. Several virtual experiments were performed to relate the disease dynamics with the structure of the infected subpopulation (e.g., the distribution of infected times). Moreover, the short-term effect of health control policies on modifying that structure was studied. Results show that the characteristics of the population are crucial for the local epidemiology of TB. The developed user-friendly tool is ready to test control strategies of disease in any city in the short-term.

Indexed as

contact tracingdiagnosis delayepidemiologyHIV-tuberculosisimmigrantindividual-based modelrisk factorstuberculosis

Identifiers

PMID26793189
PMCPMC4709466

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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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.