Estimating the prevalence of multiple diseases from two‐stage hierarchical pooling. (18th April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Warasi, Md S.; Tebbs, Joshua M.; McMahan, Christopher S.; Bilder, Christopher R.
• Is Part Of: Statistics in medicine. Volume 35:Number 21(2016)
• Page Start: 3851
• Page End: 3864
• Publication Date: 2016-04-18
• Subjects: Bayesian estimation -- group testing -- infertility prevention project -- pooled testing -- screening -- sensitivity -- specificity; Medical statistics -- Periodicals; Statistique médicale -- Périodiques; Statistiques médicales -- Périodiques; 610.727
• DOI: 10.1002/sim.6964
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0277-6715

Abstract

Abstract : Testing protocols in large‐scale sexually transmitted disease screening applications often involve pooling biospecimens (e.g., blood, urine, and swabs) to lower costs and to increase the number of individuals who can be tested. With the recent development of assays that detect multiple diseases, it is now common to test biospecimen pools for multiple infections simultaneously. Recent work has developed an expectation–maximization algorithm to estimate the prevalence of two infections using a two‐stage, Dorfman‐type testing algorithm motivated by current screening practices for chlamydia and gonorrhea in the USA. In this article, we have the same goal but instead take a more flexible Bayesian approach. Doing so allows us to incorporate information about assay uncertainty during the testing process, which involves testing both pools and individuals, and also to update information as individuals are tested. Overall, our approach provides reliable inference for disease probabilities and accurately estimates assay sensitivity and specificity even when little or no information is provided in the prior distributions. We illustrate the performance of our estimation methods using simulation and by applying them to chlamydia and gonorrhea data collected in Nebraska. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.