Disease burden estimated by Bayesian latent class model

What is it about?

It is very important for public health official to know the true disease incidence in the population, in order to plan for prevention and control measure. We used Bayesian method to better estimate the true disease incidence.

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Why is it important?

A disease condition is always detected by diagnostic tests. If diagnostic tests are not perfect, the number of positive result does not equal the number of true disease. The conventional method was biased as the diagnostic test is rarely perfect and it did not account for its imperfectness. We used Bayesian latent class model to account for the uncertainty inherent in the diagnostic test and better estimated the disease incidence.