ArticlePLoS computational biology2017
Projecting social contact matrices in 152 countries using contact surveys and demographic data.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 470 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
470 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A scoping review of COVID-19 modelling studies in Belgium 2020-2024: incorporation of behaviour and lessons learned.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2026Pooled it
- Maximizing public health benefits: Policy perspectives on coverage and cell-based influenza vaccines in the US.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2026Article
- Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine (LAIV) for Children for the Prevention of Influenza Illness in Sweden: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis.Infectious diseases and therapy · 2026Article
- Postpandemic Social Contact Patterns: A Cross-Sectional Survey in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.Infectious diseases and therapy · 2026Article
- Influenza vaccine protection and contact patterns among outpatients with influenza-like illness during the 2024-2025 season in China: a test-negative case-control study.Journal of global health · 2026Article
- Beyond mean-field age-structured models: degree heterogeneity and cross-country variability in epidemic risk.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2026Article
- County, district and community-level measles transmission in the United States in 2013-2025.Nature medicine · 2026Article
- Modeling the impact of adherence to U.S. isolation and masking guidance on SARS-CoV-2 transmission in office workplaces in 2021-2022.Epidemics · 2026Article
- Measuring population immunity against influenza using individual antibody titres: a multicountry, retrospective observational study.The Lancet. Infectious diseases · 2026Observational
- Assessing the costs and benefits of non-pharmaceutical pandemic measures using the economic values of social contacts.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2026Article
- Mapping spatial colleague connectivity patterns from individual-level registry data to inform regional pandemic interventions.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Impact of temporal patterns in working contacts on epidemic spread.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A comparison of contact patterns derived from the population structure in agent-based models and empirical contact survey data.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Event-based spatiotemporal networks for modelling emergent phenomena in complex systems.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Counterfactual evaluation of elementary and secondary school policies in the COVID-19 pandemic.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Transmission Dominance Under Random-Contact Intensification in Epidemic Networks: Multilayer Contact Network Simulation Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Implications for distancing measures on in-person school and work attendance from Italian post-pandemic social contact data.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Modeling the impact of adherence to U.S. isolation and masking guidance on SARS-CoV-2 transmission in office workplaces in 2021-2022.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Economic Evaluation of Pneumococcal Vaccination in Egypt: Cost-Effectiveness, Budget Impact, and Domestic Manufacturing Potential.Vaccines · 2026Article
- VIBES: A multiscale modeling approach integrating within-host and between-hosts dynamics in epidemics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
410 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
Heterogeneities in contact networks have a major effect in determining whether a pathogen can become epidemic or persist at endemic levels. Epidemic models that determine which interventions can successfully prevent an outbreak need to account for social structure and mixing patterns. Contact patterns vary across age and locations (e.g. home, work, and school), and including them as predictors in transmission dynamic models of pathogens that spread socially will improve the models' realism. Data from population-based contact diaries in eight European countries from the POLYMOD study were projected to 144 other countries using a Bayesian hierarchical model that estimated the proclivity of age-and-location-specific contact patterns for the countries, using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation. Household level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys for nine lower-income countries and socio-demographic factors from several on-line databases for 152 countries were used to quantify similarity of countries to estimate contact patterns in the home, work, school and other locations for countries for which no contact data are available, accounting for demographic structure, household structure where known, and a variety of metrics including workforce participation and school enrolment. Contacts are highly assortative with age across all countries considered, but pronounced regional differences in the age-specific contacts at home were noticeable, with more inter-generational contacts in Asian countries than in other settings. Moreover, there were variations in contact patterns by location, with work-place contacts being least assortative. These variations led to differences in the effect of social distancing measures in an age structured epidemic model. Contacts have an important role in transmission dynamic models that use contact rates to characterize the spread of contact-transmissible diseases. This study provides estimates of mixing patterns for societies for which contact data such as POLYMOD are not yet available.
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.