title: Effect of data quality on estimates of farm infectiousness trends in the UK 2001 foot-and-mouth disease epidemic.
abstract: Most of the mathematical models that were developed to study the UK 2001 foot-and-mouth disease epidemic assumed that the infectiousness of infected premises was constant over their infectious periods. However, there is some controversy over whether this assumption is appropriate. Uncertainty about which farm infected which in 2001 means that the only method to determine if there were trends in farm infectiousness is the fitting of mechanistic mathematical models to the epidemic data. The parameter values that are estimated using this technique, however, may be influenced by missing and inaccurate data. In particular to the UK 2001 epidemic, this includes unreported infectives, inaccurate farm infection dates and unknown farm latent periods. Here, we show that such data degradation prevents successful determination of trends in farm infectiousness.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Infectious Diseases, University of Edinburgh, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK. nick.savill@ed.ac.uk
authors.forename: Nicholas J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Savill
authors.forename: Darren J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Shaw
authors.forename: Rob
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Deardon
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Tildesley
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Keeling
authors.forename: Mark E J
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Woolhouse
authors.forename: Stephen P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Brooks
authors.forename: Bryan T
authors.initials: BT
authors.lastname: Grenfell
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000662:veterinary*; D005536:Foot-and-Mouth Disease / Q000453:epidemiology*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D006113:United Kingdom