Capture-recapture methods in surveys of diseases of the nervous system

R A C Hughes.Epidemiological study of Guillain-Barré syndrome in south east England.This volume pp 74-7.Ecologists have used capture-recapture methods for carrying out censuses of wildlife populations for many years.But only recently have epidemiologists realised that they can be applied to surveys of prevalence and incidence of disease.The underlying idea is fairly simple.The size of a population can be estimated by catching and marking a sample, then releasing that sample and allowing it to mix with the other members of that population before catching a second sample.The proportion of marked to unmarked subjects in the second catch will be the same as the proportion of the number in the first catch to the number in the whole population.The figure makes the principle clearer.Humans, of course, are eVectively marked already-by, for example, some combination of name, sex, date of birth, and NHS or social security number.So an investigator who has employed more than one source of information to identify cases in a survey, can estimate how many cases have been missed from the overlap between sources.The method has proved its worth in circumstances where complete enumeration is especially diYcult.Capture-recapture analyses, for example, enabled useful estimates to be made of the prevalence of HIV infection in street working prostitutes in Glasgow and of the number of homeless people in an area of central London. 1 2 They have also been used to establish rates of neurological disorders more accurately.A capturerecapture analysis of data concerning the prevalence of on July 19, 2023 by guest.