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Sexual contacts and epidemic thresholds

Nature volume 423, pages 605–606 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Distributions of the number of sexual partners reported in surveys show a pronounced skew, with most people having had one or no partners in the past year and a small fraction having had many1,2. Liljeros and colleagues3 infer from the results of a Swedish survey that there is a "scale-free" population distribution of sexual contacts, consistent with a preferential-attachment model3,4, in which “the rich get richer” and epidemics are driven by extremely promiscuous individuals. Here we reanalyse the data from Sweden and from other countries, using more appropriate statistical tools. Our findings support the conventional wisdom that epidemic thresholds exist in these populations, and indicate that current public-health strategies to reduce the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections do not need to be radically refocused.

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Figure 1: Interval estimates of the scaling parameter, ρ, for the generalized Yule probability mass function for Swedish males and females.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, and Center for AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, University of Washington, Seattle, 98195, Washington, USA

    James Holland Jones & Mark S. Handcock

Authors
  1. James Holland Jones
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  2. Mark S. Handcock
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Correspondence to James Holland Jones.

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Jones, J., Handcock, M. Sexual contacts and epidemic thresholds. Nature 423, 605–606 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/423605a

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