Layan Maylis, Hens Niel, de Hoog Marieke L A, Bruijning-Verhagen Patricia C J L, Cowling Benjamin J, Cauchemez Simon
Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases Unit, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, CNRS UMR2000, 75015 Paris, France.
Collège Doctoral, Sorbonne Université, 75006 Paris, France.
Am J Epidemiol. 2024 Dec 2;193(12):1832-1839. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwae106.
Modeling studies of household transmission data have helped characterize the role of children in influenza and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemics. However, estimates from these studies may be biased since they do not account for the heterogeneous nature of household contacts. Here, we quantified the impact of contact heterogeneity between household members on the estimation of child relative susceptibility and infectivity. We simulated epidemics of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-like and influenza virus-like infections in a synthetic population of 1000 households, assuming heterogeneous contact levels. Relative contact frequencies were derived from a household contact study according to which contacts are more frequent in the father-mother pair, followed by the child-mother, child-child, and finally child-father pairs. Child susceptibility and infectivity were then estimated while accounting for heterogeneous contacts or not. When ignoring contact heterogeneity, child relative susceptibility was underestimated by approximately 20% in the two disease scenarios. Child relative infectivity was underestimated by 20% when children and adults had different infectivity levels. These results are sensitive to our assumptions of European-style household contact patterns; but they highlight that household studies collecting both disease and contact data are needed to assess the role of complex household contact behavior on disease transmission and improve estimation of key biological parameters.
家庭传播数据的建模研究有助于描述儿童在流感和2019冠状病毒病（COVID-19）流行中的作用。然而，这些研究的估计可能存在偏差，因为它们没有考虑家庭接触的异质性。在此，我们量化了家庭成员之间接触异质性对儿童相对易感性和传染性估计的影响。我们在一个由1000个家庭组成的合成人群中模拟了严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）样和流感病毒样感染的流行情况，假设接触水平存在异质性。相对接触频率来自一项家庭接触研究，根据该研究，父母之间的接触更为频繁，其次是孩子与母亲、孩子与孩子，最后是孩子与父亲之间的接触。然后在考虑或不考虑接触异质性的情况下估计儿童的易感性和传染性。在这两种疾病情况下，当忽略接触异质性时，儿童相对易感性被低估了约20%。当儿童和成人具有不同的传染性水平时，儿童相对传染性被低估了20%。这些结果对我们关于欧式家庭接触模式的假设很敏感；但它们强调，需要收集疾病和接触数据的家庭研究来评估复杂的家庭接触行为对疾病传播的作用，并改进关键生物学参数的估计。
