Ades A E, Garrett A J, Cowell J, Chin K S, Peckham C S
Department of Paediatric Epidemiology, Institute of Child Health, London.
Epidemiol Infect. 1988 Jun;100(3):467-79. doi: 10.1017/s0950268800067200.
A computer program was written to analyse oligonucleotide patterns displayed by gel electrophoresis following restriction endonuclease digestion of human cytomegaloviral DNA, and was applied to an epidemiological study of the transmission of infection in a hospital special care baby unit, with regard to infant-to-infant and mother-to-infant transmission. The program calculates the molecular weight of oligonucleotides from their mobilities, using a cubic spline curve based on the mobilities of oligonucleotides from the AD169 strain. A matching algorithm then calculates the number of unmatched fragments for each pair of viral isolates. This was used as a similarity measure which successfully distinguished mother and infant isolate pairs from epidemiologically unrelated pairs. The program is not intended to provide fully automatic matching, but could be recommended as a screening device to pick out pairs of strains which are sufficiently similar to suggest a common source of infection, and which may warrant closer comparison. Other applications are discussed, and the possible use of densitometers to automate data entry is considered.
编写了一个计算机程序，用于分析人巨细胞病毒DNA经限制性内切酶消化后凝胶电泳显示的寡核苷酸模式，并将其应用于一家医院特殊护理婴儿病房感染传播的流行病学研究，涉及婴儿对婴儿和母婴传播。该程序根据寡核苷酸的迁移率计算其分子量，使用基于AD169株寡核苷酸迁移率的三次样条曲线。然后，匹配算法计算每对病毒分离株未匹配片段的数量。这被用作一种相似性度量，成功地区分了母婴分离株对与流行病学上不相关的对。该程序并非旨在提供全自动匹配，但可推荐作为一种筛选工具，以挑选出足够相似以表明存在共同感染源且可能需要进一步比较的菌株对。文中还讨论了其他应用，并考虑了使用密度计自动输入数据的可能性。
