Agent-based modelling of Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission: a systematic review.

Background: Traditional epidemiological models tend to oversimplify the transmission dynamics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) to replicate observed tuberculosis (TB) epidemic patterns. This has led to growing interest in advanced methodologies like agent-based modelling (ABM), which can more accurately represent the complex heterogeneity of TB transmission.

A data science pipeline applied to Australia's 2022 COVID-19 Omicron waves.

The field of software engineering is advancing at astonishing speed, with packages now available to support many stages of data science pipelines. These packages can support infectious disease modelling to be more robust, efficient and transparent, which has been particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. We developed a package for the construction of infectious disease models, integrated it with several open-source libraries and applied this composite pipeline to multiple data sources that provided insights into Australia's 2022 COVID-19 epidemic.

A finite element model for predicting impact-induced damage to a skin simulant.

A finite element model was developed for assessing the efficacy of rugby body padding in reducing the risk of sustaining cuts and abrasions. The model was developed to predict the onset of damage to a soft tissue simulant from concentrated impact loading (i.e.

Replicating superspreader dynamics with compartmental models.

Infectious disease outbreaks often exhibit superspreader dynamics, where most infected people generate no, or few secondary cases, and only a small fraction of individuals are responsible for a large proportion of transmission. Although capturing this heterogeneity is critical for estimating outbreak risk and the effectiveness of group-specific interventions, it is typically neglected in compartmental models of infectious disease transmission-which constitute the most common transmission dynamic modeling framework. In this study we propose different classes of compartmental epidemic models that incorporate transmission heterogeneity, fit them to a number of real outbreak datasets, and benchmark their performance against the canonical superspreader model (i.

Epidemiology of soil-transmitted helminths using quantitative PCR and risk factors for hookworm and Necator americanus infection in school children in Dak Lak province, Vietnam.

Background: Soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infection is driven by a complex interaction of demographic, socioeconomic and behavioural factors, including those related to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Epidemiological studies that measure both infection and potential risk factors associated with infection help to understand the drivers of transmission in a population and therefore can provide information to optimise STH control programmes.

Methods: During October and November 2019, we conducted a cross-sectional survey of the prevalence and intensity of STH infection and associated risk factors among 7710 primary-school-age children from 64 primary schools across 13 districts in Dak Lak province, Vietnam.

Factors associated with vanA VRE acquisition in Cardiothoracic Surgery patients during an acute outbreak.

Background: There was an acute outbreak of vanA Enterococcus faecium (VREfm) in a tertiary Melbourne teaching hospital between 2015 and 2016 amongst Cardiothoracic Surgery (CTS) ward and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients. Prior to this outbreak vanB VRE had been the predominate genotype encountered.

Methods: A retrospective, matched (1:2), case-control study was conducted on CTS patients between 1 August 2015 and 31 May 2016 admitted to a hospital in Melbourne, during an outbreak of vanA VREfm to identify factors associated with colonisation or infection.

An outbreak of vanA vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium in a hospital with endemic vanB VRE.

Background: In Australia, vanB vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREfm) has been endemic for over 20 years, but vanA VREfm isolates have rarely been reported.

Methods: This outbreak report describes an outbreak of vanA VREfm in the intensive care unit (ICU) and cardiothoracic surgery (CTS) wards of a Melbourne hospital in 2015-2016. After the cluster was initially identified in the ICU ward, an active screening programme was implemented.