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A Frailty Mixture Model for Estimating Vaccine Efficacy
Author(s) -
Longini Ira M.,
Halloran M. Elizabeth
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series c (applied statistics)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.205
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9876
pISSN - 0035-9254
DOI - 10.2307/2986152
Subject(s) - statistics , gerontology , econometrics , medicine , mathematics , computer science
SUMMARY Vaccines can have heterogeneous effects on the host's immune response. Some vaccinated people may have a strong response and be highly protected against infectious challenge, but others may only derive varying levels of partial protection. We derive a statistical model for estimating vaccine efficacy that expresses the often unmeasured heterogeneous host response and other vaccine effects in terms of estimable parameters. In addition, the model incorporates the infection process into the base‐line hazard rate. The model falls into the general category of frailty models (with point mass at 0) employed in survival analysis. As an example, we estimate the efficacy of a measles vaccine from a measles outbreak in Burundi.