Williams RJ, Brintz BJ, Ribeiro Dos Santos G, Huang AT, Buddhari D, Kaewhiran S, Iamsirithaworn S, Rothman AL, Thomas S, Farmer A, Fernandez S, Cummings DAT, Anderson KB, Salje H, Leung DT
Sci Adv 2024 Feb;10(7):eadj9786
PMID: 38363842
Abstract
The differentiation of dengue virus (DENV) infection, a major cause of acute febrile illness in tropical regions, from other etiologies, may help prioritize laboratory testing and limit the inappropriate use of antibiotics. While traditional clinical prediction models focus on individual patient-level parameters, we hypothesize that for infectious diseases, population-level data sources may improve predictive ability. To create a clinical prediction model that integrates patient-extrinsic data for identifying DENV among febrile patients presenting to a hospital in Thailand, we fit random forest classifiers combining clinical data with climate and population-level epidemiologic data. In cross-validation, compared to a parsimonious model with the top clinical predictors, a model with the addition of climate data, reconstructed susceptibility estimates, force of infection estimates, and a recent case clustering metric significantly improved model performance.