ArticlePLoS neglected tropical diseases2016
Potential Impact of Sexual Transmission on Ebola Virus Epidemiology: Sierra Leone as a Case Study.
Article in PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review of early modelling studies of Ebola virus disease in West Africa.Epidemiology and infection · 2017Pooled it
- Dynamic shift in the dominant transmission route of clade Ib monkeypox virus across networks with sexual and nonsexual contacts.Science advances · 2026Article
- Viral threats to pregnancy: Global health risks in the era of pandemics.Advances in virus research · 2026Review
- Estimation of end-of-outbreak probabilities in the presence of delayed and incomplete case reporting.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Ebola virus disease.Nature reviews. Disease primers · 2020Review
- Review
- Sexual transmission and the probability of an end of the Ebola virus disease epidemic.Journal of theoretical biology · 2019Article
- Effect of sexual transmission on the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014: a mathematical modelling study.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- [Outbreak of Ébola in Lunsar. Effectiveness of a socio-sanitary intervention].Revista espanola de salud publica · 2018Article
- Information Circulation in times of Ebola: Twitter and the Sexual Transmission of Ebola by Survivors.PLoS currents · 2018Article
- Enhancement of Ebola virus infection by seminal amyloid fibrils.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- What Is a Host? Attributes of Individual Susceptibility.Infection and immunity · 2018Review
- Article
- How Relevant Is Sexual Transmission of Zika Virus?PLoS medicine · 2016Article
- Hosting of mass gathering sporting events during the 2013-2016 Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa: experience from three African countries.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSexual transmission of Ebola virus disease (EVD) 6 months after onset of symptoms has been recently documented, and Ebola virus RNA has been detected in semen of survivors up to 9 months after onset of symptoms. As countries affected by the 2013-2015 epidemic in West Africa, by far the largest to date, are declared free of Ebola virus disease (EVD), it remains unclear what threat is posed by rare sexual transmission events that could arise from survivors. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL
findingsWe devised a compartmental mathematical model that includes sexual transmission from convalescent survivors: a SEICR (susceptible-exposed-infectious-convalescent-recovered) transmission model. We fitted the model to weekly incidence of EVD cases from the 2014-2015 epidemic in Sierra Leone. Sensitivity analyses and Monte Carlo simulations showed that a 0.1% per sex act transmission probability and a 3-month convalescent period (the two key unknown parameters of sexual transmission) create very few additional cases, but would extend the epidemic by 83 days [95% CI: 68-98 days] (p < 0.0001) on average. Strikingly, a 6-month convalescent period extended the average epidemic by 540 days (95% CI: 508-572 days), doubling the current length, despite an insignificant rise in the number of new cases generated. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results show that reductions in the per sex act transmission probability via abstinence and condom use should reduce the number of sporadic sexual transmission events, but will not significantly reduce the epidemic size and may only minimally shorten the length of time the public health community must maintain response preparedness. While the number of infectious survivors is expected to greatly decline over the coming months, our results show that transmission events may still be expected for quite some time as each event results in a new potential cluster of non-sexual transmission. Precise measurement of the convalescent period is thus important for planning ongoing surveillance efforts.
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