Key result
A transmission model showed that spatiotemporal variation in birth rates explains the timing of rotavirus epidemics, and large-scale vaccination leads to reduced and lagged epidemics.
Why the study?
How does rotavirus vaccination and birth rate variation affect the spatiotemporal dynamics of rotavirus epidemics in the United States?
How does rotavirus vaccination and birth rate variation affect the spatiotemporal dynamics of rotavirus epidemics in the United States?
Spatiotemporal variation in birth rates explains the timing of rotavirus epidemics, and vaccination leads to reduced and lagged epidemics.
Model predictions may guide birth rate-adjusted rotavirus vaccination timing; leaves open empirical validation in US surveillance data.
Historically, annual rotavirus activity in the United States has started in the southwest in late fall and ended in the northeast 3 months later; this trend has diminished in recent years. Traveling waves of infection or local environmental drivers cannot account for these patterns. A transmission model calibrated against epidemiological data shows that spatiotemporal variation in birth rate can explain the timing of rotavirus epidemics. The recent large-scale introduction of rotavirus vaccination provides a natural experiment to further test the impact of susceptible recruitment on disease dynamics. The model predicts a pattern of reduced and lagged epidemics postvaccination, closely matching the observed dynamics. Armed with this validated model, we explore the relative importance of direct and indirect protection, a key issue in determining the worldwide benefits of vaccination.
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Pitzer et al. (2009) studied Rotavirus epidemics. Rotavirus vaccination vs. Pre-vaccination period was evaluated on Timing and dynamics of rotavirus epidemics. A transmission model showed that spatiotemporal variation in birth rates explains the timing of rotavirus epidemics, and large-scale vaccination leads to reduced and lagged epidemics.
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