Diagnosis of tuberculosis in groups of badgers: an exploration of the impact of trapping efficiency, infection prevalence and the use of multiple tests
Accurate detection of infection with Mycobacterium bovis in live badgers would enable targeted tuberculosis control. Practical challenges in sampling wild badger populations mean that diagnosis of infection at the group (rather than the individual) level is attractive. We modelled data spanning 7 years containing over 2000 sampling events from a population of wild badgers in southwest England to quantify the ability to correctly identify the infection status of badgers at the group level. We explored the effects of variations in: (1) trapping efficiency; (2) prevalence of M. bovis; (3) using three diagnostic tests singly and in combination with one another; and (4) the number of badgers required to test positive in order to classify groups as infected. No single test was able to reliably identify infected badger groups if 80% sensitive, at least 94% specific, and able to be performed rapidly in the field.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 February 2020.
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#9,183,589
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#1,790
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Outputs of similar age from Epidemiology & Infection
#15
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Altmetric has tracked 34,364,397 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 73rd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,765 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.2. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 62% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 55 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its contemporaries.
