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Semi‐parametric estimation of age–time specific infection incidence from serial prevalence data
Author(s) -
Nagelkerke Nico,
Heisterkamp Siem,
Borgdorff Martien,
Broekmans Jaap,
Van Houwelingen Hans
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0258(19990215)18:3<307::aid-sim15>3.0.co;2-z
Subject(s) - incidence (geometry) , estimation , parametric statistics , medicine , demography , tuberculin , statistics , proportional hazards model , tuberculosis , mathematics , pathology , geometry , management , economics , sociology
Many infections cause lasting detectable immune responses, whose prevalence can be estimated from cross‐sectional surveys. However, such surveys do not provide direct information on the incidence of infection. We address the issue of estimating age and time specific incidence from a series of prevalence surveys under the assumption that incidence changes exponentially with time, but make no assumption about the age specific incidence. We show that these assumptions lead to a proportional hazards model and estimate its parameters using semi‐parametric maximum likelihood methods. The method is applied to tuberculin surveys in The Netherlands to explore age dependence of the risk of tuberculous infection in the presence of a strong secular decline in this risk. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.