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Abstract

Title: A Model to Estimate Risk of Infection with Human Herpesvirus 8 Associated with Transfusion from Cross-Sectional Data.
Author: Pfeiffer RM, Mbulaiteye S, Engels E
Journal: Biometrics 60:249-256
Year: 2004
Month: March

Abstract: Summary. In cross-sectional studies of infectious diseases, the data typically consist of: age at the time of study, status (presence or absence) of infection, and a chronology of events possibly associated with the disease. Motivated by a study of how human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) is transmitted among children with sickle cell anemia in Uganda, we have developed a flexible parametric approach for combining current status data with a history of blood transfusions. We model heterogeneity in transfusion-associated risk by a childspecific random effect. We present an extension of the model to accommodate the fact that there is no gold standard for HHV-8 infection and infection status was assessed by a serological assay. The parameters are estimated via maximum likelihood. Finally, we present results from applying various parameterizations of the model to the Ugandan study. Key words: Age at transfusion data; Current-status data; Mixture models; Multistate models.