Using molecular data for epidemiological inference: assessing the prevalence of Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense in tsetse in Serengeti, Tanzania
Abstract
Human African trypanosomiasis is a fatal disease that is carried by a tsetse vector. Assessing the proportion of tsetse which carries human-infective trypanosomes is important in assessing human disease risk and understanding disease transmission dynamics. However, identifying flies which carry transmissible infections is difficult, due to potential presence of other trypanosome species in the same fly, and concurrent detection of immature infections which are not transmissible. We used three methods to estimate the proportion of flies carrying human-infective trypanosomes: dissection and microscopic examination of flies to visualise trypanosomes directly in the fly; PCR of fly midguts in which trypanosomes were observed by microscopy; and theoretical analysis using a mathematical model of disease transmission. All three methods found the prevalence to be extremely low. Given the low prevalence, dissection/microscopy requires prohibitively large sample sizes and therefore PCR-based approaches are likely to be of most value. However, interpretation of PCR data is not straightforward; whilst PCR identifies flies carrying pathogen genetic material it does not directly identify flies with transmissible infections. This study highlights the need for a consensus approach on the analysis and interpretation of PCR data to generate reliable and comparable measures of the proportion of flies which carry transmissible human-infective trypanosomes.
Citation
Auty, H.K.; Picozzi, K.; Malele, I.; Torr, S.J.; Cleaveland, S.; Welburn, S. Using Molecular Data for Epidemiological Inference: Assessing the Prevalence of Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense in Tsetse in Serengeti, Tanzania. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases (2012) 6 (1) e1501. [DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0001501]