Short-term Prediction of the Incidence of Congenital Rubella Syndrome

In this study, we predicted the number of CRS cases with a formulation based on the parameters from two studies from the U.K. and the U.S. in 2013 and up to week 25, 2014. We found an increase of CRS cases following the rubella epidemic with a lag of 5-7 months, which was almost in agreement with a previous experience in Greece 4 . A close correlation was found between the predicted cumulative number of CRS cases in 2013 and the actual cumulative number of reported CRS cases, validating the present method of CRS prediction (Figure 3). The ex post evaluation generated two different patterns of the predicted number of CRS cases: a higher prediction based on parameters from the U.K. study and a lower prediction based on the U.S. study (Figure 4). The lower prediction based on the data from the U.S. agreed closely with the actual cumulative number of CRS cases. A dissociation between the predicted number of CRS cases based on two studies from the U.K. and the U.S. may be attributable to a difference in the probability of CRS, which directly affects the CRS potential, during the period up to 10 weeks of gestational age. While a higher percentage (90%) of CRS was found during the period up to 10 weeks of gestational age in the U.K. study, relatively lower percentages (40% or 70%, respectively) of CRS, compared with that in the UK study, during the period up to 10 weeks or between 5 and 8 weeks of gestational age were observed in the U.S. study.However, the reasons for the differenc...

Source: PLOS Currents Outbreaks - October 30, 2014 Category: Epidemiology Authors: yasushiohkusa Source Type: research