Deriving age-specific incidence from prevalence with an ordinary differential equation
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Published on: December 9, 2015
Ralph Brinks1, Sandra Landwehr, Andrea Icks
1Institute for Biometry and Epidemiology, German Diabetes Centre, Duesseldorf, Germany. ralph.brinks@ddz.uni-duesseldorf.de
Abstract:
This article describes new relationships between the age-specific incidence of, the prevalence of and mortality from a chronic disease. We express these relationships in terms of an ordinary differential equation and form the methodological basis for a novel approach to estimating incidences from age-specific prevalence data. We examine practical aspects of the relationships and a comparison with a known stochastic method in a simulation study. Finally, we apply the novel method to a data set of renal replacement therapy recorded from patients with chronic kidney failure in a region of Germany with approximately 310,000 inhabitants from 2002 to 2010.
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