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Distribution of survival times of deliberate Plasmodium falciparum infections in tertiary syphilis patients

Sama, W. ; Dietz, K. ; Smith, T.

In: Transactions of The Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2006, vol. 100, no. 9, p. 811-816

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    Titre
    • Distribution of survival times of deliberate Plasmodium falciparum infections in tertiary syphilis patients
    Auteur
    • Sama, W.. Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, Swiss Tropical Institute, Socinstrasse 57, Postfach CH-4002, Basel, Switzerland
    • Dietz, K.. Institut für Medizinische Biometrie, Westbahnhofstrasse 55, D-72070 Tübingen, Germany
    • Smith, T.. Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, Swiss Tropical Institute, Socinstrasse 57, Postfach CH-4002, Basel, Switzerland
    Type de document
    • Postprint
    Langue
    • Anglais
    Publié dans
    • Transactions of The Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2006, vol. 100, no. 9, p. 811-816. Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
    Autre version électronique
    Identifiant OAI-PMH
    • oai:doc.rero.ch:296983
    Summary
    Survival time data of Plasmodium falciparum infections from deliberate infection of human subjects with P. falciparum between 1940 and 1963 as a treatment for neurosyphilis in the USA (Georgia) have been used to test the fits of five commonly used parametric distributions for survival times using quantile-quantile plots. Our results suggest that the best fit is obtained from the Gompertz or Weibull distributions. This result has important implications for mathematical modelling of malaria, which has for the past century exclusively assumed that the duration of malaria infections has an exponential distribution. It is desirable to know the correct distribution because its shape profoundly influences the length of monitoring needed in an intervention programme for eliminating or reducing malaria