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Problems in Estimating Mosquito Infection Rates Using Minimum Infection Rate

2003; Oxford University Press; Volume: 40; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1603/0022-2585-40.5.595

1938-2928

Weidong Gu, Richard L. Lampman, Robert J. Novak,

Malaria Research and Control

Determining the role of various mosquito species in the transmission of arboviruses relies on an accurate estimate of the proportion of infected individuals in an area. Basically, there are two methods for estimating the proportion of infected individuals from pooled samples. One is the widely used minimum infection rate (MIR), which is calculated as the ratio of the number of positive pools to the total number of mosquitoes tested. The underlying assumption of the MIR is that only one infected individual exists in a positive pool. This assumption is valid for arboviruses that are relatively rare, but it becomes problematic when infection rates are high and/or pool sizes are large. The other method of estimating the proportion of infected individuals in pooled samples is the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), which is defined as the infection rate most likely observed given the testing results and an assumed probabilistic model (i.e., binomial distribution of infected individuals in a positive …