Predictive model developed for polio
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - 16:31
in Health & Medicine
Using outbreak data from 2003-2010, Kathleen O'Reilly of Imperial College London, UK and colleagues develop a statistical model of the spread of wild polioviruses in Africa that can predict polio outbreaks six months in advance. The authors' findings, published in this week's PLoS Medicine, indicate that outbreaks of polio in Africa over the study period resulted mainly from continued transmission in Nigeria and other countries that reported polio cases, and from poor immunization status.