Sampling Bias in the Molecular Epidemiology of Tuberculosis

摘要

Among the goals of the molecular epidemiology of infectious disease are to quantify the extent of ongoingtransmission of infectious agents and to identify host- and strain-specific risk factors for disease spread. Idemonstrate the potential bias in estimates of recent transmission and the impact of risk factors for cluster-ing by using computer simulations to reconstruct populations of tuberculosis patients and sample fromthem. The bias consistently results in underestimating recent transmission and the impact of risk factorsfor recent transmission