Nicholas C Grassly

..Mucosal immunity is thought to wane over time but the rate of loss of protection has not been examined...

..To derive methods to estimate and project the fraction of children orphaned by AIDS and other causes...

..The synthesis of seasonal infectious disease epidemiology attempted by this paper highlights the need for further empirical and theoretical work...

..A high-potency monovalent oral type 1 poliovirus vaccine (mOPV1) was developed in 2005 to tackle persistent poliovirus transmission in the last remaining infected countries. Our aim was to assess the efficacy of this vaccine in India...

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..We further demonstrate increased synchrony of syphilis oscillations across cities over time, providing empirical evidence for an increasingly connected sexual network in the United States...

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..Reducing adult mortality from causes other than AIDS brings the model estimates into close agreement with the surveys. This suggests that the fraction of orphans attributable to AIDS is greater than estimated previously...

..Persistent wild-poliovirus transmission, particularly in India, has raised questions about the degree of mucosal immunity induced by oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) in tropical countries...

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..We analyze strategies to counteract this and show that switching to monovalent vaccine may finally interrupt virus transmission...

..The potential impact of more efficient, targeted treatment of infected households depends on the relative contribution of community and household transmission of infection, which have not previously been estimated...

..Here we explore whether alternative, targeted approaches are effective antibiotic-sparing strategies...

..We present an age-structured mathematical model of trachoma transmission and disease to predict the impact of interventions on the prevalence of blinding trachoma...

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..We aimed to establish why incidence is rising in these countries despite programme innovations including the introduction of new vaccines...

..This novel model structure reproduces many age- and time-dependent epidemiological patterns observed in endemic settings and allows the dynamic effect of treatment on infection and disease sequelae to be gauged...

..Understanding the relative contribution of these vaccines and the improved coverage to the decline in incident cases is essential for future planning...

..A quantitative understanding of the factors that predict the distribution and timing of outbreaks will enable their prevention and facilitate the completion of global eradication...

..Changes in socio-demographic characteristics and reported sexual behaviour are investigated...

..Transmissibility is therefore substantially higher than that of seasonal flu, and comparable with lower estimates of R0 obtained from previous influenza pandemics...

..The impact of IPV on poliovirus transmission in countries where fecal-oral spread is common is unknown but is likely to be limited compared with OPV...

..The implications of disease transmission and pathogenesis for trachoma control programmes are discussed...

..Expenditure on teacher training will need to increase by 26% if Education for All targets are to be met in the face of AIDS. CONCLUSIONS: HIV/AIDS has significant implications for resource allocation in the education sector in Zambia...

..Analyses suggest that if the successes achieved in some countries in prevention of transmission can be expanded to a global scale by 2005, about 29 million new infections could be prevented by 2010...

..We explain the reason for moving to the use of plausibility bounds, the factors that determine the width of the bounds, and the implications for policy makers and programme managers...