We consider the estimation of the optimal interval between doses for interventions such as malaria chemoprevention and vaccine booster doses that are applied intermittently in infectious disease control. A flexible exponential-like function to model the time-varying intervention effect in the framework of Andersen-Gill model for recurrent event time data is considered. The partial likelihood estimation approach is adopted, and a large scale simulation study is carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. A simple guideline for the choice of the optimal interval between successive doses is proposed. The methodology is illustrated with the analysis of data from a malaria chemoprevention trial. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
【저자키워드】 Vaccine, malaria, Ghana, waning efficacy., Recurrent events, Andersen-Gill model, proportional intensity,