TY - JOUR
T1 - Inferring longitudinal patterns of group B Streptococcus colonization during pregnancy
AU - Gonçalves, Bronner P.
AU - Poyraz, Onur
AU - Paul, Proma
AU - Lawn, Joy E.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a grant ( OPP1180644 ) from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ( https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ ) to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (PI: JEL).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s)
PY - 2023/7/21
Y1 - 2023/7/21
N2 - Maternal colonization by Group B Streptococcus (GBS) can lead to severe infection in neonates and has also been associated with prematurity and stillbirth. Better quantitative understanding of the trajectories of GBS carriage during pregnancy is essential for the design of informative epidemiological studies. Here, we describe analyses of published longitudinal data using Bayesian hidden Markov models, which involve the estimation of parameters related to the succession of latent states (infection status) and observations (culture positivity). In addition to quantifying infection acquisition and clearance probabilities, the statistical approach also suggests that for some longitudinal patterns of culture results, pregnant women were likely to have been GBS-colonized despite a negative diagnostic result. We believe this method, if used in future longitudinal studies of maternal GBS colonization, would improve our understanding of the pathologies linked to this bacterium and could also inform maternal GBS vaccine trial design.
AB - Maternal colonization by Group B Streptococcus (GBS) can lead to severe infection in neonates and has also been associated with prematurity and stillbirth. Better quantitative understanding of the trajectories of GBS carriage during pregnancy is essential for the design of informative epidemiological studies. Here, we describe analyses of published longitudinal data using Bayesian hidden Markov models, which involve the estimation of parameters related to the succession of latent states (infection status) and observations (culture positivity). In addition to quantifying infection acquisition and clearance probabilities, the statistical approach also suggests that for some longitudinal patterns of culture results, pregnant women were likely to have been GBS-colonized despite a negative diagnostic result. We believe this method, if used in future longitudinal studies of maternal GBS colonization, would improve our understanding of the pathologies linked to this bacterium and could also inform maternal GBS vaccine trial design.
KW - Microbiology
KW - Statistical computing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85162131225&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107023
DO - 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107023
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85162131225
SN - 2589-0042
VL - 26
SP - 1
EP - 12
JO - iScience
JF - iScience
IS - 7
M1 - 107023
ER -
