Mathematical models provide mechanisms to evaluate the potential efficacy of public health interventions. While traditional models of tuberculosis have relied on parameters obtained from historical observation, there is a pressing need to develop models that depend more directly on actual surveillance and contact-tracing data. Additionally, treatment outcomes of patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis are often compromised by the delay before detailed drug resistance profiles are available. In practical terms, this means that patients with drug-resistant disease are often treated with inappropriate or ineffective drugs for many months. We have previously developed an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) to facilitate clinical care of tuberculosis patients;here we propose to extend this platform to function as a research tool.
The specific aims of this project are to: (1) develop a surveillance system for multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant (XDR) tuberculosis based on the EMR established in Lima, Peru;(2) develop realistic models of tuberculosis transmission that capture important individual and community heterogeneities and use these models to assess the impact of specific control policies; and (3) use surveillance data to develop an individual prediction model for drug resistance profiles that will serve as a decision support tool for choosing appropriate tuberculosis drug regimens.
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