Predictive Value of Ov16 Antibody Prevalence in Different Sub-Populations for Elimination of African Onchocerciasis.

Predictive Value of Ov16 Antibody Prevalence in Different Sub-Populations for Elimination of African Onchocerciasis. Am J Epidemiol. 2019 May 07;: Authors: Coffeng LE, Stolk WA, Golden A, de Los Santos T, Domingo GJ, de Vlas SJ Abstract The World Health Organization currently recommends to evaluate elimination of onchocerciasis by testing whether Ov16 antibody prevalence in 0-9-year-old children is below 0.1%. However, the certainty of evidence for this recommendation is considered to be low. We use the established ONCHOSIM model to investigate the predictive value of different Ov16 antibody prevalence thresholds in various age groups for elimination of onchocerciasis in a variety of endemic settings and for various mass drug administration scenarios. According to our simulations, the predictive value of Ov16 antibody prevalence for elimination highly depends on the pre-control epidemiological situation, history of mass drug administration, the age group that is sampled, and the chosen Ov16 antibody prevalence threshold. The Ov16 antibody prevalence in children aged 5-14 performs best in predicting elimination. Appropriate threshold values for this age group start at 2.0% for very highly endemic areas; for lower endemic areas, even higher threshold values are safe to use. Guidelines can be improved by sampling school-age children, which also is operationally more feasible than targeting children under ten. The use of higher threshold...
Source: Am J Epidemiol - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Tags: Am J Epidemiol Source Type: research