Viruses, Vol. 12, Pages 186: Identifying Age Cohorts Responsible for Peste Des Petits Ruminants Virus Transmission among Sheep, Goats, and Cattle in Northern Tanzania

Viruses, Vol. 12, Pages 186: Identifying Age Cohorts Responsible for Peste Des Petits Ruminants Virus Transmission among Sheep, Goats, and Cattle in Northern Tanzania Viruses doi: 10.3390/v12020186 Authors: Herzog de Glanville Willett Cattadori Kapur Hudson Buza Swai Cleaveland Bjørnstad Peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) causes a contagious disease of high morbidity and mortality in global sheep and goat populations. To better control this disease and inform eradication strategies, an improved understanding of how PPRV transmission risk varies by age is needed. Our study used a piece-wise catalytic model to estimate the age-specific force of infection (FOI, per capita infection rate of susceptible hosts) among sheep, goats, and cattle from a cross-sectional serosurvey dataset collected in 2016 in Tanzania. Apparent seroprevalence increased with age, reaching 53.6%, 46.8%, and 11.6% (true seroprevalence: 52.7%, 52.8%, 39.2%) for sheep, goats, and cattle, respectively. Seroprevalence was significantly higher among pastoral animals than agropastoral animals across all ages, with pastoral sheep and goat seroprevalence approaching 70% and 80%, respectively, suggesting pastoral endemicity. The best fitting piece-wise catalytic models merged age groups: two for sheep, three for goats, and four for cattle. The signal of these age heterogeneities were weak, except for a significant FOI peak among 2.5–3.5-year-old pastoral cattle...
Source: Viruses - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research