ArticleScientific reports2018
Surveillance of vector-borne pathogens under imperfect detection: lessons from Chagas disease risk (mis)measurement.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 23 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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
23 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Triatomine Fauna and Natural Infection by Trypanosoma (Schizotrypanum) cruzi (Kinetoplastea: Trypanosomatidae) in the Caribbean Region of Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela: A Systematic Review.Neotropical entomology · 2025Pooled it
- Heterogeneity of Trypanosoma cruzi infection rates in vectors and animal reservoirs in Colombia: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Parasites & vectors · 2019Pooled it
- Efficacy and Safety of Nifurtimox in Pediatric Patients with Chagas Disease: Results at 4-Year Follow-Up in a Prospective, Historically Controlled Study (CHICO SECURE).Antimicrobial agents and chemotherapy · 2023Trial
- Simultaneous serological assessment of vector and pathogen exposure to support intervention monitoring and understand host-vector interactions.Malaria journal · 2026Article
- Strategic planning of prevention and surveillance for emerging diseases and invasive species.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Integrating geospatial tools is crucial for enhancing control strategies against human lymphatic filarial infections in Ghana: A comprehensive review.Parasite epidemiology and control · 2025Review
- Estimation of Trypanosoma cruzi infection in the main vector Triatoma infestans: accounting for imperfect detection using site-occupancy models.Parasites & vectors · 2025Article
- New Approaches to the Ecology ofPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Home invasion of triatomines (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) in the urban area of Mato Grosso, Brazil.Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical · 2025Article
- Temporal assessment of entomological surveillance of Trypanosoma cruzi vectors in an endemic area of northeastern Brazil.PloS one · 2023Observational
- Detecting Leishmania in dogs: A hierarchical-modeling approach to investigate the performance of parasitological and qPCR-based diagnostic procedures.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2022Article
- Review
- Near infrared spectroscopy accurately detects Trypanosoma cruzi non-destructively in midguts, rectum and excreta samples of Triatoma infestans.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- TriatoScore: an entomological-risk score for Chagas disease vector control-surveillance.Parasites & vectors · 2021Article
- Evaluation of molecular assays to detect Leishmania donovani in Phlebotomus argentipes fed on post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis patients.Parasites & vectors · 2021Article
- Deforestation effects on Attalea palms and their resident Rhodnius, vectors of Chagas disease, in eastern Amazonia.PloS one · 2021Article
- Article
- Chagas disease diagnosis and cure assessment: Getting formally hierarchical about a naturally hierarchical problem.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2020Article
- Trypanosomatid infections in captive wild mammals and potential vectors at the Brasilia Zoo, Federal District, Brazil.Veterinary medicine and science · 2020Article
- Wide distribution of Trypanosoma cruzi-infected triatomines in the State of Bahia, Brazil.Parasites & vectors · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Vector-borne pathogens threaten human health worldwide. Despite their critical role in disease prevention, routine surveillance systems often rely on low-complexity pathogen detection tests of uncertain accuracy. In Chagas disease surveillance, optical microscopy (OM) is routinely used for detecting Trypanosoma cruzi in its vectors. Here, we use replicate T. cruzi detection data and hierarchical site-occupancy models to assess the reliability of OM-based T. cruzi surveillance while explicitly accounting for false-negative and false-positive results. We investigated 841 triatomines with OM slides (1194 fresh, 1192 Giemsa-stained) plus conventional (cPCR, 841 assays) and quantitative PCR (qPCR, 1682 assays). Detections were considered unambiguous only when parasitologists unmistakably identified T. cruzi in Giemsa-stained slides. qPCR was >99% sensitive and specific, whereas cPCR was ~100% specific but only ~55% sensitive. In routine surveillance, examination of a single OM slide per vector missed ~50-75% of infections and wrongly scored as infected ~7% of the bugs. qPCR-based and model-based infection frequency estimates were nearly three times higher, on average, than OM-based indices. We conclude that the risk of vector-borne Chagas disease may be substantially higher than routine surveillance data suggest. The hierarchical modelling approach we illustrate can help enhance vector-borne disease surveillance systems when pathogen detection is imperfect.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
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