| Mancy, Rebecca, Rajeev, Malavika, Lugelo, Ahmed, Brunker, Kirstyn, Cleaveland, Sarah, Ferguson, Elaine A., Hotopp, Karen, Kazwala, Rudovick, Magoto, Matthias, Rysava, Kristyna, Haydon, Daniel T. and Hampson, Katie 2022. Rabies shows how scale of transmission can enable acute infections to persist at low prevalence. Science 376 (6592) , pp. 512-516. 10.1126/science.abn0713 |
Abstract
How acute pathogens persist and what curtails their epidemic growth in the absence of acquired immunity remains unknown. Canine rabies is a fatal zoonosis that circulates endemically at low prevalence among domestic dogs in low- and middle-income countries. We traced rabies transmission in a population of 50,000 dogs in Tanzania from 2002 to 2016 and applied individual-based models to these spatially resolved data to investigate the mechanisms modulating transmission and the scale over which they operate. Although rabies prevalence never exceeded 0.15%, the best-fitting models demonstrated appreciable depletion of susceptible animals that occurred at local scales because of clusters of deaths and dogs already incubating infection. Individual variation in rabid dog behavior facilitated virus dispersal and cocirculation of virus lineages, enabling metapopulation persistence. These mechanisms have important implications for prediction and control of pathogens that circulate in spatially structured populations.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Publication |
| Status: | Published |
| Schools: | Schools > Medicine Research Institutes & Centres > Centre for Trials Research (CNTRR) |
| Publisher: | American Association for the Advancement of Science |
| ISSN: | 0036-8075 |
| Date of Acceptance: | 7 March 2022 |
| Last Modified: | 05 Nov 2025 10:45 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/182113 |
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