Revisiting Rayong: Shifting Seroprofiles of Dengue in Thailand and Their Implications for Transmission and Control
Top Cited Papers
Open Access
- 5 November 2013
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in American Journal of Epidemiology
- Vol. 179 (3), 353-360
- https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwt256
Abstract
Dengue virus has traditionally caused substantial morbidity and mortality among children less than 15 years of age in Southeast Asia. Over the last 2 decades, a significant increase in the mean age of cases has been reported, and a once pediatric disease now causes substantial burden among the adult population. An age-stratified serological study (n = 1,736) was conducted in 2010 among schoolchildren in the Mueang Rayong district of Thailand, where a similar study had been conducted in 1980/1981. Serotype-specific forces of infection (λ(t)) and basic reproductive numbers (R0) of dengue were estimated for the periods 1969–1980 and 1993–2010. Despite a significant increase in the age at exposure and a decrease in λ(t) from 0.038/year to 0.019/year, R0 changed only from 3.3 to 3.2. Significant heterogeneity was observed across subdistricts and schools, with R0 ranging between 1.7 and 6.8. These findings are consistent with the idea that the observed age shift might be a consequence of the demographic transition in Thailand. Changes in critical vaccination fractions, estimated by using R0, have not accompanied the increase in age at exposure. These results have implications for dengue control interventions because multiple countries in Southeast Asia are undergoing similar demographic transitions. It is likely that dengue will never again be a disease exclusively of children.Keywords
This publication has 27 references indexed in Scilit:
- Geographical gradient of mean age of dengue haemorrhagic fever patients in northern ThailandEpidemiology and Infection, 2011
- From Re-Emergence to Hyperendemicity: The Natural History of the Dengue Epidemic in BrazilPLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2011
- Seventy-five years of estimating the force of infection from current status dataEpidemiology and Infection, 2009
- The Impact of the Demographic Transition on Dengue in Thailand: Insights from a Statistical Analysis and Mathematical ModelingPLoS Medicine, 2009
- Relationship between Transmission Intensity and Incidence of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever in ThailandPLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2008
- Decreases in dengue transmission may act to increase the incidence of dengue hemorrhagic feverProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008
- Age and Clinical Dengue IllnessEmerging Infectious Diseases, 2007
- Revisiting the Basic Reproductive Number for Malaria and Its Implications for Malaria ControlPLoS Biology, 2007
- More Dengue, More QuestionsEmerging Infectious Diseases, 2005
- Transmission dynamics and epidemiology of dengue: insights from age–stratified sero–prevalence surveysPhilosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 1999