Journal article
Modelling hepatitis C transmission over a social network of injecting drug users
DA Rolls, G Daraganova, R Sacks-Davis, M Hellard, R Jenkinson, E McBryde, PE Pattison, GL Robins
JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY | ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD | Published : 2012
Abstract
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a blood-borne virus that disproportionately affects people who inject drugs (PWIDs). Based on extensive interview and blood test data from a longitudinal study in Melbourne, Australia, we describe an individual-based transmission model for HCV spread amongst PWID. We use this model to simulate the transmission of HCV on an empirical social network of PWID. A feature of our model is that sources of infection can be both network neighbours and non-neighbours via "importing". Data-driven estimates of sharing frequency and rate of importing are provided. Compared to an appropriately calibrated fully connected network, the empirical network provides some protective effe..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council (ARC)
Awarded by Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the field workers who collected the data that made this study possible. The authors wish to thank Jodie McVernon and James McCaw for providing useful advice and providing helpful computing resources, Campbell Aitken for useful comments on hepatitis C and data collection for the Melbourne study, and Justin Denholm for background on the presentation and treatment of HCV. The authors also appreciate the support of the Australian Research Council (ARC) (Grant DP 0987730) and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) (project 331312, capacity building Grant 358425, a senior research fellowship and a Ph.D. research scholarship) which funded portions of this work.