Sebastian Meyer

• Dr. sc. nat.
• Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg

Routine surveillance of notifiable infectious diseases gives rise to daily or weekly counts of reported cases stratified by region and age group. From a public health perspective, forecasts of infectious disease spread are of central importance. We argue that such forecasts need to properly incorporate the attached uncertainty, so they should be pr...

Routine public health surveillance of notifiable infectious diseases gives rise to weekly counts of reported cases-possibly stratified by region and/or age group. We investigate how an age-structured social contact matrix can be incorporated into a spatio-temporal endemic-epidemic model for infectious disease counts. To illustrate the approach, we...

The availability of geocoded health data and the inherent temporal structure of communicable diseases have led to an increased interest in statistical models and software for spatio-temporal data with epidemic features. The open source R package surveillance can handle various levels of aggregation at which infective events have been recorded: indi...

Spatio-temporal interaction is inherent to cases of infectious diseases and occurrences of earthquakes, whereas the spread of other events, such as cancer or crime, is less evident. Statistical significance tests of space-time clustering usually assess the correlation between the spatial and temporal (transformed) distances of the events. Although...

Short-time human travel behaviour can be described by a power law with respect to distance. We incorporate this information in space-time models for infectious disease surveillance data to better capture the dynamics of disease spread. Two previously established model classes are extended, which both decompose disease risk additively into endemic a...

The goal of this work was to quantify the effect of school closure during the first year of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Switzerland. This allowed us to determine the usefulness of school closures as a pandemic countermeasure for emerging coronaviruses in the absence of pharmaceutical interventions. The use of multivariate endemi...

Plain language summary A clinical study investigating the interchangeability between infliximab, a previously patented biotechnological produced drug (biological) and its successor product biosimilar SB2, which is highly similar to the existing reference product, in the treatment of patients with inflammatory bowel diseases Why was the study done?...

Count data with an excess of zeros are often encountered when modeling infectious disease occurrence. The degree of zero inflation can vary over time due to nonepidemic periods as well as by age group or region. A well-established approach to analyze multivariate incidence time series is the endemic-epidemic modeling framework, also known as the HH...

Background and purpose: Aluminum can be released into food by aluminum-containing food-contact materials (Al-FCM) during preparation or storage. There is considerable concern that extra aluminum intake may have negative effects on public health, especially with regard to its high background exposure and neurotoxic properties of aluminum in high ex...

Background Severe dementia is one of the most challenging conditions when caring for people in nursing homes. A manualised non-pharmacological, psychosocial group intervention especially adapted to the needs of people with severe dementia (PWSDs) is currently still lacking. To close this gap, we adapted the evidence-based multicomponent non-pharmac...

Count data with excessive zeros are often encountered when modelling infectious disease occurrence. The degree of zero inflation can vary over time due to non-epidemic periods as well as by age group or region. The existing endemic-epidemic modelling framework (aka HHH) lacks a proper treatment for surveillance data with excessive zeros as it is li...

Time series of proportions of infected patients or positive specimens are frequently encountered in disease control and prevention. Since proportions are bounded and often asymmetrically distributed, conventional Gaussian time series models only apply to suitably transformed proportions. Here we borrow both from beta regression and from the well-es...

The pathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi is considered a main driver of Iberian oak decline (IOD), a forest disease which decimates holm oaks (Quercus ilex) and cork oaks (Quercus suber) in a multipurpose, silvo‐pastoral and seminatural ecosystem of 3.1 million hectares in the south‐west of Europe. Little is known about the spatial dynamics of Phytophth...

Background Long-term data on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients switched from originator to biosimilar infliximab SB2 are lacking. The aim of the conducted study was to investigate the effectiveness, immunogenicity and safety of a large prospectively followed-up IBD patient cohort that was entirely switched from originator infliximab to bios...

Phytophthora cinnamomi Rands is considered the main factor behind the Iberian oak decline (IOD). This epidemic is decimating Holm oaks ( Quercus ilex L.) and cork oaks ( Quercus suber L.) which are the keystone trees of a multipurpose, silvo-pastoral and semi-natural ecosystem of 3.1 million hectares in the south-west of Europe. Forest diseases are...

Accurate prediction of flu activity enables health officials to plan disease prevention and allocate treatment resources. A promising forecasting approach is to adapt the well-established endemic-epidemic modeling framework to time series of infectious disease proportions. Using U.S. influenza-like illness surveillance data over 18 seasons, we asse...

Background SB2 is a biosimilar infliximab approved for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients. These are the first prospective data investigating long-term efficacy, safety, and pharmacokinetics after switching from infliximab originator to biosimilar SB2 in IBD patients. Methods This is a prospective, observational cohort stud...

Forecasting the future course of epidemics has always been one of the main goals of epidemic modelling. This chapter reviews statistical methods to quantify the accuracy of epidemic forecasts. We distinguish point and probabilistic forecasts and describe different methods to evaluate and compare the predictive performance across models. Two case st...

Chemical UV filters are common components in sunscreens and cosmetic products. The question of adverse health risks is not completely resolved, partly owing to lacking human data from dermal exposure, which are essential for sound risk assessment. Therefore, we investigated the urinary toxicokinetics of 2-ethylhexyl salicylate (EHS) after a 1-day d...

Background: Chemical UV filters are common components in sunscreens and cosmetic products and used to protect the skin against harmful effects of sunlight like sunburn. However, the effectiveness of sunscreens in the prevention of skin cancer is in some parts still controversial. Meanwhile, questions about negative effects of the chemical UV filte...

The R package 'polyCub' implements cubature (numerical integration) over polygonal domains. It solves the problem of integrating a continuously differentiable function f(x,y) over simple closed polygons. The following cubature methods are implemented: product Gauss cubature, the simple two-dimensional midpoint rule, adaptive cubature for radially s...

Background & Aims: Intestinal fibrosis is a long-term complication in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) that frequently results in functional damage, bowel obstruction, and surgery. Interleukin (IL) 36 is a group of cytokines in the IL1 family with inflammatory effects. We studied the expression of IL36 and its receptor, interleukin 1 receptor like...

Abstract Background The ability to perform activities of daily living (ADLs) is a central marker in the diagnosis and progression of the dementia syndrome. ADLs can be identified as basic ADLs (BADLs), which are fairly easy to perform, or instrumental ADLs (IADLs), which involve more complex activities. Presently, the only performance-based assessm...

Forecasting the future course of epidemics has always been one of the main goals of epidemic modelling. This chapter reviews statistical methods to quantify the accuracy of epidemic forecasts. We distinguish point and probabilistic forecasts and describe different methods to evaluate and compare the predictive performance across models. Two case st...

This is a contribution to the discussion of Reinhart's "Review of Self-Exciting Spatio-Temporal Point Processes and Their Applications" [Statist. Sci. 33 (2018)], which synthesizes developments from various research fields. Here, I discuss some experiences from modeling the spread of infectious diseases. Furthermore, I try to complement the review...

This is a comment on Reinhart's "Review of Self-Exciting Spatio-Temporal Point Processes and Their Applications" (arXiv:1708.02647v1). I contribute some experiences from modelling the spread of infectious diseases. Furthermore, I try to complement the review with regard to the availability of software for the described models, which I think is esse...

Statistical boosting algorithms have triggered a lot of research during the last decade. They combine a powerful machine learning approach with classical statistical modelling, offering various practical advantages like automated variable selection and implicit regularization of effect estimates. They are extremely flexible, as the underlying base-...

Subtyping depression is important in order to further delineate biological causes of depressive syndromes. The aim of this study was to evaluate clinical and outcome characteristics of distinct subtypes of depression and to assess proportion and features of patients fulfilling criteria for more than one subtype. Melancholic, atypical and anxious su...

The objective of the present study was the application and comparison of common remission and recovery criteria between patients with the diagnosis of schizophrenia and major depressive disorder (MDD) under inclusion of other outcome parameters. Patients with schizophrenia and MDD who were treated as inpatients at the beginning of the study were ex...

Routine surveillance of notifiable infectious diseases gives rise to daily or weekly counts of reported cases stratified by region and age group. From a public health perspective, forecasts of infectious disease spread are of central importance. We argue that such forecasts need to properly incorporate the attached uncertainty, so should be probabi...

This document contains additional figures from our analysis of norovirus infections by age group in Berlin, 2011-2015.

Meyer and Held (2016, Biostatistics) present an age-structured spatio-temporal model for infectious disease counts. The approach is illustrated in a case study on norovirus gastroenteritis in Berlin, 2011-2015, by age group, city district and week, using additional contact data from the POLYMOD survey. This R package contains the data and code to r...

Infectious diseases affect public health and regularly gain attention during epidemics. Seasonal waves of influenza and norovirus outbreaks demonstrate the ease of epidemic spread of microparasitic pathogens. Epidemic models enable predictions and support the understanding of infectious disease spread. They are increasingly recognized as a useful t...

In this supplement, we apply the various tests for space-time interaction discussed in the main manuscript to invasive meningococcal disease occurrence in Germany, 2002-2008, as analysed by Meyer et al. (2012) in their original proposal of the spatio-temporal endemic-epidemic point process model.

Spatio-temporal interaction is inherent to cases of infectious diseases and occurrences of earthquakes, whereas the spread of other events, such as cancer or crime, is less evident. Statistical significance tests of space-time clustering usually assess the correlation between the spatial and temporal (transformed) distances of the events. Although...

Routine public health surveillance of notifiable infectious diseases gives rise to weekly counts of reported cases - possibly stratified by region and/or age group. A well-established approach to the statistical analysis of such surveillance data are endemic-epidemic time-series models. The temporal dependence inherent to communicable diseases is t...

The availability of geocoded health data and the inherent temporal structure of communicable diseases have led to an increased interest in statistical models and software for spatio-temporal data with epidemic features. The open source R package surveillance can handle various levels of aggregation at which infective events have been recorded: indi...

We provide details on likelihood inference in both modelling frameworks, and elaborate on the integration of radially symmetric functions over polygons. This supplement also contains additional figures and tables of the power-law models for invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) and influenza. Space-time animations are available as a separate supplem...

Objective: Impaired social functioning and autistic symptoms are characteristics of schizophrenia. The social hormones oxytocin (OT) and arginine-vasopressin (AVP) both modulate social interaction and therefore may be involved in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. We investigated whether men with schizophrenia show altered OT and AVP levels compar...

This study explored the degree to which adult patients with Tourette syndrome (TS) exhibit particular attachment styles and the possible association between the underlying attachment dimensions and forms of aggression. Fifty-three TS patients (ages 17-72 years) and 54 matched healthy controls completed the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised...

Case reports from infectious disease surveillance with registered location and time of infection allow for spatio-temporal point process models of infectious disease spread. An endemic component describes the baseline risk of infection driven by population density as well as temporal and exogenous effects. A second, epidemic component captures inte...

OBJECTIVES: Infections resulting in immune activation have been proposed to play an etiological role in a subgroup of patients with Tourette syndrome (TS). METHODS: In order to further characterize the interaction between pathogens and the innate immune system the toll-like receptor (TLR) 4 on CD14 + monocytes and soluble CD14 (sCD14) levels were a...

Introduction Surgeons and psychiatrists have been described as two contrary species, the one healing by hand and the other by word. Empathy is needed in every physician-patient relationship. We tested whether 1) surgeons and psychiatrists show different levels of cognitive and emotional empathy; 2) measurements of cognitive and emotional empathy co...

In randomized controlled trials, maintenance treatment for relapse prevention has been proven to be efficacious in patients responding in acute treatment, its efficacy in long-term outcome in "real-world patients" has yet to be proven. Three-year long-term data from a large naturalistic multisite follow-up were presented. Severe relapse was defined...

Objective: The study aimed to examine suicidal behaviour during in-patient care in a psychiatric university hospital. Method: Based upon a psychiatric basic documentation system prevalence and risk factors of in-patient suicides and suicide attempts were investigated (1995 - 2010). Results: A total of 42 in-patient suicides and 166 attempts we...

This cross-cultural study was designed to examine cultural differences in empathy levels of first-year medical students. A total of 257 students from the academic year 2010/11, 131 at Jimma University, Ethiopia, and 126 at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany, completed the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES), the Reading the Mind...

Objectives. Doctors' empathy towards their patients is considered important for treatment outcome. However, during medical school there might be a decline in empathy called "hardening of the heart." This study evaluated the cognitive and emotional empathy in medical students and investigated the influence of a preference for a specialty and student...

Factors contributing to treatment-emergent suicidal ideation (TESI) using antidepressants have been in the focus of recent research strategies. We investigated previously established clinical predictors of TESI and combined these with several polymorphisms of candidate genes in patients with major depressive disorder. Common polymorphisms involved...

One recent study indicates a significant association between certain single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the genomic sequence of feline p53 and feline injection-site sarcoma (FISS). The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between a specific nucleotide insertion in p53 gene and FISS in a German cat population. Blood samples fr...

To date, research has identified distinct antipsychotic response trajectories yet focussing on data from randomized-controlled trials (RCTs). Therefore, the heterogeneity of response in "real-world" schizophrenia patients is still unknown. Antipsychotic response was evaluated in 399 patients suffering from a schizophrenia spectrum disorder within a...

There is general consent that empathy is crucial for the physician-patient relationship and thus an important issue in medical education. This comparative study was designed to examine the differences in empathy between first year and final year medical students in Jimma University, Ethiopia. A comparative cross-sectional study among 131 first year...

Akathisia as well as younger age, early illness onset and discharge are important risk factors for suicidality in patients with first-episode schizophrenia. The aim of the present study was to analyze on a single case basis the relationship between a sudden increase in suicidality, anxiety symptoms, medication dosing and clinician- and patient-rate...

Background: To analyse insight of illness during the course of inpatient treatment, and to identify influencing factors and predictors of insight. Methods: Insight into illness was examined in 399 patients using the item G12 of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale ("lack of insight and judgement"). Ratings of the PANSS, HAMD, UKU, GAF, SOFAS...

Relapse and its predictors were examined among patients with schizophrenia in the year after hospital discharge. The sample included 200 patients with schizophrenia participating in a German multicenter study. Relapse was defined as a worsening of psychopathological symptoms or rehospitalization in the year after hospital discharge. Predictors exam...

A novel point process model continuous in space-time is proposed for quantifying the transmission dynamics of the two most common meningococcal antigenic sequence types observed in Germany 2002-2008. Modeling is based on the conditional intensity function (CIF), which is described by a superposition of additive and multiplicative components. As an...

To examine the influencing factors and predictors of early improvement in schizophrenia patients. 370 patients suffering from a schizophrenia spectrum disorder were examined within a naturalistic multicenter study. Early improvement was defined as a ≥30% PANSS total score reduction within the first two treatment weeks, response as a ≥50% improvemen...

The PANSS (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) is one of the most important rating instruments for patients with schizophrenia. Nevertheless, there is a long and ongoing debate in the psychiatric community regarding its mathematical properties.All 30 items range from 1 to 7 leading to a minimum total score of 30, implying that the PANSS is an int...

To evaluate the predictive validity of early response compared to other well-known predictor variables in acutely ill first-episode patients. 112 patients were treated with a mean dosage of 4.14 mg (±1.70) haloperidol and 112 patients with a mean dosage of 4.17 mg (±1.55) risperidone for a mean inpatient treatment duration of 42.92 days (±16.85) wi...

Self-ratings of psychotic experiences might be biased by depressive symptoms. Data from a large naturalistic multicentre trial on depressed inpatients (n=488) who were assessed on a biweekly basis until discharge were analyzed. Self-rated psychotic symptoms as assessed with the 90-Item Symptom Checklist (SCL-90) were correlated with the SCL-90 tota...

A novel point process model continuous in space-time is proposed for infectious disease data. Modelling is based on the conditional intensity function (CIF) and extends an additive-multiplicative CIF model previously proposed for discrete space epidemic modelling. Estimation is performed by means of full maximum likelihood and a simulation algorith...

In this Master's Thesis, a novel combination of point process models continuous in space-time is proposed for infectious disease data. Modelling is driven by the conditional intensity function, which enables a step towards a regression framework for self-exciting spatio-temporal point processes. The model is an extension of the discrete space addit...

Hintergrund: Die Überwachung vektorbasierter Infektionskrankheiten (VBI) bildet eine Herausforderung für die interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit von Biologen, Geographen, Gesundheitswissenschaftlern, Medizinern und Statistikern. Einige VBI, z.B. Frühsommer-Meningoenzephalitis (FSME), zeigen ein räumlich heterogenes Verbreitungsmuster. Sie bilden damit...

Auch 21 Jahre nach Tschernobyl besteht weiter Forschungs- und Aufklärungsbedarf bezüglich der Auswirkungen von Radioaktivität auf den menschlichen Organismus. Um den möglichen Einfluss von radioaktiver Oberflächenstrahlung auf das Geschlechterverhältnis der Neugeburten zu untersuchen wurden geschlechterspezifische Geburtenzahlen in Europa (1950-199...