Rebecca Christofferson

Rebecca Christofferson
Louisiana State University | LSU · Department of Pathobiological Sciences

Ph.D.

About

118
Publications
15,717
Reads
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1,584
Citations
Introduction
My expertise is in infectious disease transmission, quantitative methodologies for surveillance & transmission modeling, & data communication. My work focuses on ways to better inform model parameters that best explain & predict transmission, expansion, & emergence of biological public health threats. My varied background has also allowed me to foster effective communication skills across disciplines, allowing for seamless integration with multiple, interdisciplinary partners.
Additional affiliations
September 2014 - April 2022
Louisiana State University
Position
  • Research Assistant
Description
  • Infectious Disease Transmission & Epidemiology; SME and infection control with high containment lab experience; COVID communication
Education
August 2007 - August 2011
Louisiana State University
Field of study
  • Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases/ Applied Computational Biology
August 2002 - December 2005
Louisiana State University
Field of study
  • Applied Statistics
August 1998 - March 2002
Louisiana State University
Field of study
  • Zoology

Publications

Publications (118)
Article
Full-text available
Aedes aegypti are indoor-dwelling vectors of many arboviruses, including Zika (ZIKV) and chikungunya (CHIKV). The dynamics of these viruses within the mosquito are known to be temperature-dependent, and models that address risk and predictions of the transmission efficiency and patterns typically use meteorological temperature data. These data do n...
Article
Full-text available
The focus of this study was to identify risk factors for severe and critical COVID-19, evaluate local respiratory immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and develop a prognostic tool for COVID-19 severity using accessible early indicators. Using nasopharyngeal swab samples from hospitalized patients with COVID-19 of varying severity during the f...
Article
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Bunyamwera virus (BUNV) is the prototypical member of the Bunyamwera serogroup within the Orthobunyvirus genus. BUNV is transmitted by mosquito vectors of the genera Culex , Aedes and Anopheles and has historically circulated in East Africa, though the transmission has been observed in Argentina. BUNV has been identified as an agent of human and an...
Article
Rural Rwandan communities face health challenges for humans and animals, and the topography and climate of the Kirehe District of Rwanda put farmers at high risk for mosquito-borne diseases. Individuals from 92 Rwandan farms were surveyed about farm practices, as well as animal and human health histories between December 2017 and February 2018. Hum...
Preprint
Full-text available
Batai virus is an arbovirus with wide geographic, host, and climactic ranges. BATV infects primarily avian species but can cause disease in ruminants and humans. Louisiana is at particular risk for overlaps in natural and agricultural systems as the Mississippi Flyway passes through the state. We assessed the vector competence of Louisiana Cx. quin...
Preprint
Full-text available
Rural Rwandan communities face challenges to the health of humans and animals. The topography and climate of the Kirehe District of Rwanda put farmers there at high risk for mosquito-borne diseases. Farmers from 92 Rwandan farms were surveyed about farm practices, as well as animal and human health histories between December 2017 to February 2018....
Article
Full-text available
Bunyamwera virus (BUNV) ( Bunyamwera orthobunyavirus ) has been found in Sub-Saharan Africa and demonstrated recently as cocirculating with Rift Valley Fever Virus (RVFV). Little is known regarding the breadth of transmission modalities of Bunyamwera. Given its co-occurence with RVFV, we hypothesized the transmission system of BUNV shared similarit...
Article
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Background The United Nations has declared that humans have a right to clean air. Despite this, many deaths and disability-adjusted life years are attributed to air pollution exposure each year. We face both challenges to air quality and opportunities to improve, but several areas need to be addressed with urgency. Objective This paper summarises...
Article
The environments in which we live affect individual and community risk for disease transmission and illness severity. Communities' and neighborhoods' waste stream management designs and health care organizations' spatial and structural architecture also influence individuals' and communities' pathogenic vulnerabilities and how well health sector in...
Article
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Aims West Nile Virus (WNV) has remained a persistent source of vector-borne disease risk in California since first being identified in the state in 2003. The geographic distribution of WNV activity is relatively widespread, but varies considerably across different regions within the state. Spatial variation in human WNV infection depends upon socia...
Article
Full-text available
Temperature is a well-known effector of several transmission factors of mosquito-borne viruses, including within mosquito dynamics. These dynamics are often characterized by vector competence and the extrinsic incubation period (EIP). Vector competence is the intrinsic ability of a mosquito population to become infected with and transmit a virus, w...
Article
Full-text available
Aedes spp. mosquitos are responsible for transmitting several viruses that pose significant public health risks, including dengue, Zika, yellow fever, chikungunya, and West Nile viruses. However, quantifying the number of individuals at risk and their exposure to Aedes spp. mosquitos over time is challenging due to various factors. Even accurate es...
Article
Preterm birth affects nearly 10% of all pregnancies in the United States, with 40% of those due, in part, to infections. Streptococcus agalactiae (Group B Streptococcus, GBS) is one of the most common perinatal pathogens responsible for these infections. Current therapeutic techniques aimed to ameliorate invasive GBS infections are less than desira...
Article
Full-text available
Weather variables has been described as major drivers of vector proliferation and arbovirus transmission. Among them, temperature has consistently been found to be impactful in transmission dynamics, and models that incorporate temperature have been widely used to evaluate and forecast transmission or arboviruses like dengue, zika, or chikungunya v...
Article
Full-text available
Arboviruses receive heightened research attention during major outbreaks or when they cause unusual or severe clinical disease, but they are otherwise undercharacterized. Global change is also accelerating the emergence and spread of arboviral diseases, leading to time-sensitive questions about potential interactions between viruses and novel vecto...
Article
Full-text available
SARS-CoV-2 is a highly infectious virus and etiologic agent of COVID-19, which is spread by respiratory droplets, aerosols, and contaminated surfaces. Copper is a known antiviral agent, and has resulted in successful reduction of pathogens and infections by 83-99.9% when coated on surfaces in intensive care units. Additionally, copper has been show...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding the risk factors for breakthrough coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (BC19) is critical to inform policy. Herein, we assessed Delta (Lineage B.1.617.2) variant-specific effectiveness of the BNT162b2 (Pfizer) vaccine and characterized Delta-driven BC19 cases (fully vaccinated individuals who get infected) with known-time-since-vaccina...
Article
Full-text available
The growing threat of vector-borne diseases, highlighted by recent epidemics, has prompted increased focus on the fundamental biology of vector-virus interactions. To this end, experiments are often the most reliable way to measure vector competence (the potential for arthropod vectors to transmit certain pathogens). Data from these experiments are...
Article
Full-text available
In models of mosquito–borne transmission, the mosquito biting rate is an influential parameter, and understanding the heterogeneity of the process of biting is important, as biting is usually assumed to be relatively homogeneous across individuals, with time–between–bites described by an exponentially distributed process. However, these assumptions...
Article
Full-text available
There have been multiple instances of novel pathogen emergence that have affected the health and security of the global community. To highlight that these novel pathogens presented a clear danger to public health, the WHO included “Disease X” on their list of priority pathogens in 2018. Indeed, since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, Disease X has been...
Article
Full-text available
During the COVID19 pandemic, navigating the implementation of public health measures in a politically charged environment for a large state entity was challenging. However, LSU leadership developed and deployed an effective, multi-layered mitigation plan and successfully opened in-person learning while managing cases of SARS-CoV-2 during the fourth...
Article
Full-text available
Rickettsia felis is an emerging etiological agent of rickettsioses worldwide. The cosmopolitan cat flea (Ctenocephalides felis) is the primary vector of R. felis, but R. felis has also been reported in other species of hematophagous arthropods including ticks and mosquitoes. Canines can serve as a bacteremic host to infect fleas under laboratory co...
Preprint
Full-text available
The growing threat of vector-borne diseases, highlighted by recent epidemics, has prompted increased focus on the fundamental biology of vector-virus interactions. To this end, experiments are often the most reliable way to measure vector competence (the potential for arthropod vectors to transmit certain pathogens). Data from these experiments are...
Article
Full-text available
Rwanda is located in the Central East African region where several viral pathogens with global importance were originally described, including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Ebola, Zika, Rift Valley Fever (RVF), dengue and a long list of other neglected tropical viral pathogens. Due to many factors, this region has the potential to become a gl...
Preprint
Full-text available
Arboviruses receive heightened research attention during major outbreaks, or when they cause unusual or severe clinical disease, but are otherwise under-characterized. Global change is also accelerating the emergence and spread of arboviral diseases, leading to time sensitive questions about potential interactions between viruses and novel vectors....
Article
Full-text available
Better methods to predict and prevent the emergence of zoonotic viruses could support future efforts to reduce the risk of epidemics. We propose a network science framework for understanding and predicting human and animal susceptibility to viral infections. Related approaches have so far helped to identify basic biological rules that govern cross-...
Preprint
Full-text available
The potential for a pathogen to infect a host is mediated by traits of both the host and pathogen, as well as the complex interactions between them. Arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) require an intermediate vector, introducing an additional compatibility layer. Existing predictive models of host-virus networks rarely incorporate the unique aspe...
Article
Full-text available
Background In March 2020, an influx of admissions in COVID-19 positive patients threatened to overwhelm healthcare facilities in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Exacerbating this problem was an overall shortage of diagnostic testing capability at that time, resulting in a delay in time-to-result return. An improvement in diagnostic testing avai...
Preprint
Full-text available
In models of mosquito-borne transmission, the mosquito biting rate is an influential parameter, and understanding the heterogeneity of the process of biting is important, as biting is usually assumed to be relatively homogeneous across individuals, with time-between-bites described by an exponentially distributed process. However, these assumptions...
Article
Full-text available
Oropouche virus (OROV), a member of the Orthobunyavirus genus, is an arthropod-borne virus (arbovirus) and is the etiologic agent of human and animal disease. The primary vector of OROV is presumed to be the biting midge, Culicoides paraenesis, though Culex quinquefasciatus, Cq. venezuelensis, and Aedes serratus mosquitoes are considered secondary...
Poster
Full-text available
The role of cytokines in SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis and their probable role in serving as predictors of COVID-19 severity
Article
Full-text available
Mosquito-borne viruses are the cause of significant morbidity and mortality worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Assessing risk for viral transmission often involves characterization of the vector competence of vector–virus pairings. The most common determination of vector competence uses discreet, terminal time points, which...
Article
Full-text available
Bunyamwera (BUNV), Batai (BATV) and Ngari (NRIV) are mosquito-borne viruses that are members of the genus Orthobunyavirus in the order Bunyavirales. These three viruses are enveloped with single-stranded, negative-sense RNA genomes consiting of three segments, denoted as Small (S), Medium (M) and Large (L). Ngari is thought to be the natural reasso...
Article
Full-text available
Various products and insecticides are available that purport to reduce wild populations of adult mosquitoes. Recently, several manufacturers and general public comments on the internet have promoted devices that claim that ingestion of salt will significantly reduce populations of wild mosquitoes to near zero; there are no known scientific efficacy...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: In March 2020, an influx of admissions in COVID-19 positive patients threatened to overwhelm healthcare facilities in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Exacerbating this problem was a shortage of diagnostic testing capability, resulting in a delay in time-to-result return. An improvement in diagnostic testing availability and timeline...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Transmission dynamics of arboviruses like Zika virus are often evaluated by vector competence (the proportion of infectious vectors given exposure) and the extrinsic incubation period (EIP, the time it takes for a vector to become infectious), but vector age is another critical driver of transmission dynamics. Vectorial capacity (VC) i...
Article
Full-text available
Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus are both vectors of Zika virus and both are endemic to the New Orleans Metropolitan area. Fortunately, to date there has been no known autochthonous transmission of Zika virus in New Orleans. No studies of the vector competence of local populations of Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus for Zika virus transmission have...
Article
Full-text available
In 2018, a large outbreak of Rift Valley fever (RVF)-like illness in cattle in Rwanda and surrounding countries was reported. From this outbreak, sera samples from 157 cows and 28 goats suspected to be cases of RVF were tested to confirm or determine the etiology of the disease. Specifically, the hypothesis that orthobunyaviruses-Bunyamwera virus (...
Article
Full-text available
Dengue virus (DENV) is transmitted by infectious mosquitoes during blood-feeding via saliva containing biologically-active proteins. Here, we examined the effect of varying DENV infection modality in rhesus macaques in order to improve the DENV nonhuman primate (NHP) challenge model. NHPs were exposed to DENV-1 via subcutaneous or intradermal inocu...
Article
Full-text available
In November, 2019, The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a draft set of Target Product Profiles (TPPs) describing optimal and minimally acceptable targets for vaccines against Rift Valley fever (RVF), a Phlebovirus with a three segmented genome, in both humans and ruminants. The TPPs contained rigid requirements to protect against genomic reas...
Article
Full-text available
Background Costa Rica has undergone significant changes to its forest ecosystems due, in part, to the proliferation of palm oil and other industrial agriculture operations. However, the country also boasts conservation programmes that are among the most robust in the neotropics. Consequently, gradients of anthropogenic to intact ecosystems are foun...
Article
Full-text available
Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) emerged in Colombia in 2014 into a population presumed fully susceptible. This resulted in a quick and intense spread across Colombia, resulting in an epidemic that affected an estimated 450,000 people. The reported Colombian cases accounted for over 49% of all the cases reported to the PAHO. Eco-environmental factors are...
Article
Full-text available
Tropical mosquito-borne viruses have been expanding into more temperate regions in recent decades. This is partly due to the coupled effects of temperature on mosquito life history traits and viral infection dynamics and warming surface temperatures, resulting in more suitable conditions for vectors and virus transmission. In this study, we use a d...
Article
Full-text available
Because of the increasing threat that Zika virus (ZIKV) poses to more sub-tropical area due to increased global travel, there is a need for better understanding of the effect(s) of temperature on the establishment potential of ZIKV within these subtropical, temperate, and/or seasonal Ae. aegypti populations. The first step to determining risk estab...
Data
Left–The probabilities of at least one disseminated mosquito given at least one exposed mosquito following introduction of ZIKV infected humans into a naïve mosquito population. Right–The simulated cumulative maximum (solid lines) and average cumulative (dotted lines) number of disseminated mosquitoes over the course of 30 days following the introd...
Data
Experimental Setup: Mosquito were reared at one constant temperature (either 24°C or 28°C). “Rearing Period” includes egg hatching, larval, pupal, and very young adult stages (up to 5 days post emergence). “Extrinsic Incubation Period (EIP)” refers to the time following ZIKV-infected blood-meal until sampling; the temperature associated with EIP (e...
Data
Mosquito dissemination rates (dots) and fitted distributions based on estimated rate parameter lambda (solid line) and upper and lower 95% confidence limits of lambda (dashed lines). (TIFF)
Data
Probabilities of at least one exposed mosquito given the introduction of ZIKV infected humans into a naïve population. (TIFF)
Data
Model parameters. These parameters are defined from aggregated data of dengue, a close and more characterized relative of ZIKV (compiled in [41]). (DOCX)
Data
Infection and Dissemination Rates for each temperature condition. Dissemination is calculated (number positive legs)/(number infected). (DOCX)
Data
Definition of transition rates between compartments of the stochastic SEIR model. (DOCX)
Data
Predicted probabilities of at least one infected mosquito and one disseminated infection given at least one locally exposed mosquito with and without the inclusion of pmax parameters. (DOCX)
Data
Mosquito infection rates (dots) and fitted distributions based on estimated rate parameter lambda (solid line) and upper and lower 95% confidence limits of lambda (dashed lines). (TIFF)
Article
Full-text available
Tick vectors are capable of transmitting several rickettsial species to vertebrate hosts resulting in varying levels of disease. Studies have demonstrated the transmissibility of both rickettsial pathogens and novel Rickettsia species or strains with unknown pathogenicity to vertebrate hosts during tick bloodmeal acquisition; however, the quantitat...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Measuring dengue virus transmission in endemic areas is a difficult task as many variables drive transmission, and often are not independent of one another. Objectives: We aimed to determine the utility of vectorial capacity to explain the observed dengue infection rates in three hyperendemic cities in Colombia, and tested hypotheses...
Preprint
Because of the increasing threat that Zika virus (ZIKV) poses to extra-tropical regions due to increased global travel, there is a need for better understanding of the effect(s) of temperature on the establishment potential of ZIKV within these subtropical, temperate, and/or seasonal Ae. aegypti populations. The first step to determining risk estab...
Data
Geographic locations, coordinates, and year of report of three Orthobunyaviruses: Bunyamwera (BUNV), Bataie (BATV), and Ngari (NRIV).
Article
Full-text available
Bunyamwera (BUNV), Batai (BATV), and Ngari (NRIV) are mosquito-borne viruses of the Bunyamwera serogroup in the Orthobunyavirus genus of the Bunyaviridae family. These three viruses have been found to cause disease in both livestock animals, avian species, and humans. Thus, these viruses pose a potential threat to human public health, animal health...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose of the review: We explore the histories of these two recent arbovirus experiences in South America. We then review similarly three endemic South American viruses: yellow fever, Oropouche, and Mayaro viruses. Recent findings: We discuss the commonalities of the transmission systems and the possibility of an atypical emergence, that of New...
Poster
Full-text available
This research leads to show prevalence of geohelminth infections in health people from Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil, comparing traditional Kato-Katz with Mini-Flotac, and characterization of hookworms by real-time PCR.
Article
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Background The appearance of severe Zika virus (ZIKV) disease in the most recent outbreak has prompted researchers to respond through the development of tools to quickly characterize transmission and pathology. We describe here another such tool, a mouse model of ZIKV infection and pathogenesis using the MR766 strain of virus that adds to the growi...
Article
Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) has experienced 2 major expansion events in the last decade. The most recently emerged sublineage (ECSA-V) was shown to have increased efficiency in a historically secondary vector, Aedes albopictus, leading to speculation that this was a major factor in expansion. Subsequently, a number of experimental studies focused on...
Article
Full-text available
Pokémon Go is a new game that encourages players to venture outdoors and interact with others in the pursuit of virtual Pokémon characters. With more time spent outdoors overall and in sometimes large congregations, Pokémon Go players could inadvertently elevate their risk of exposure to mosquito-borne diseases when playing in certain areas at cert...
Article
Full-text available
Expansion of mosquito-borne pathogens into more temperate regions of the world necessitates tools such as mathematical models for understanding the factors that contribute to the introduction and emergence of a disease in populations naïve to the disease. Often, these models are not developed and analyzed until after a pathogen is detected in a pop...
Data
Time series of dengue cases in Florida 2010–2015. Time series of the number of imported (A,C) and locally acquired (B,D) cases of dengue in the Miami UA (Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties, A,B) and the remainder of Florida (C,D). Data presented in these figures were obtained from [37]. Each curve in the figure represents a different year...
Data
Location of CDC Light Traps in Miami-Dade county. The map included in this figure was obtained from U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/LINE®Shapefiles [71]. (PDF)
Data
Ae. aegypti population counts from CDC light traps from 2010–2013. Blue dots are weekly counts and the solid black line is Eq S4 fit to each trap using the data presented in each figure. (PDF)
Data
(Top) Location of the Miami UA in Florida. (Bottom) Population size (2010) of the cities, towns, villages, CDPs, and CCDs within the Miami UA. The counties in the Miami UA are, from top to bottom, Martin, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade. The map included in this figure was obtained from U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/LINE®Shapefiles [71]. (PDF)
Data
(A) Residual values of gravity model predictions (actual commuter flow—model estimate). (B) Boxplot of residual values (excluding outliers). In the boxplot, the red line represents the median value and the box represents the interquartile range. (PDF)
Data
Distribution of R0T(t) (see Eq 22) for a single population on May 30 for all 5000 simulations utilized in the global sensitivity analysis. The relative frequency of R0T(t) on May 30. For these simulations, the average vector-host ratio was chosen from a uniform distribution with minimum 0 and maximum 3, β ∼ uniform(0, 0.4), and log10(θ) ∼ uniform(-...
Data
Supplementary Text. We describe the acquisition of U.S. Census data, the fitting of the vector dynamics and gravity model to data, the results of sensitivity analysis for the parameter θ, the calculation of R0T(i,t), and complexities of parameter selection. (PDF)
Data
Total dengue cases in Florida 2010–2016. Total cases of dengue imported (A) and locally acquired (B) in the Miami UA and Florida. Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties comprise the majority of the Miami UA. Martin County, part of which is considered to be within the Miami UA, is located just north of Palm Beach county. Monroe county includes...
Data
The time-varying value of R0T(t) (see Eq 22) in one CDP of introduction. R0T(t) (not taking into account the influence of human movement) at different times of the year when the average vector-host ratio is 1. Note that this calculation assumes that the vector-host ratio remains the same from the day of introduction forward and is thus an approxim...