Modelling the effect of heterogeneity of shedding on the within herd spread and identification of key parameters by sensitivity analysis

Aurélie Courcoul (1, 2) , Hervé Monod (2) , Mirjam Nielen (2, 3) , Don Klinkenberg (2, 3) , Lenny Hogerwerf (2, 3) , François Beaudeau (2, 1) , Elisabeta Vergu (2)

1 LUNAM Université [Nantes Angers Le Mans]
2 UN - Université de Nantes
3 Faculty of Veterinary Medicine

is the bacterium responsible for Q fever, a worldwide zoonosis. Ruminants, especially cattle, are recognized as the most important source of human infections. Although a great heterogeneity between shedder cows has been described, no previous studies have determined which features such as shedding route and duration or the quantity of bacteria shed have the strongest impact on the environmental contamination and thus on the zoonotic risk. Our objective was to identify key parameters whose variation highly influences spread within a dairy cattle herd, especially those related to the heterogeneity of shedding.

Mots clés: Q fever; Stochastic model; uncertainty and variability; PCA; ANOVA

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Aurélie Courcoul, Hervé Monod, Mirjam Nielen, Don Klinkenberg, Lenny Hogerwerf, et al.. Modelling the effect of heterogeneity of shedding on the within herd spread and identification of key parameters by sensitivity analysis. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2011, 284 (1), pp.130. ⟨10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.06.017⟩. ⟨hal-00720862⟩