Supplementary MaterialsFig S1 ECE3-10-7221-s001. the specificity of one test is fixed at or close to 100%, allowing the model to estimate the sensitivity and specificity of all Tazemetostat hydrobromide other tests simultaneously, in addition to infection prevalence. In wildlife systems, a test with near\perfect specificity is not available always, so we simulated data to investigate how decreasing this fixed specificity value affects the accuracy of model estimates. We used simulations to explore how the trade\off between diagnostic test specificity and sensitivity impacts prevalence estimates and found that directional biases depend on pathogen prevalence. Both the accuracy and precision of results depend on the sample size, the diagnostic tests used, and the true infection prevalence, so these factors should be considered when applying BLCA to Tazemetostat hydrobromide estimate disease prevalence and diagnostic test accuracy in wildlife systems. A wildlife disease case study, focusing on leptospirosis in California sea lions, demonstrated the potential for Bayesian latent class methods to provide reliable estimates under real\world conditions. We delineate conditions under which BLCA improves upon the results from a single diagnostic across a range of prevalence levels and sample sizes, Tazemetostat hydrobromide demonstrating when this method is preferable for disease ecologists working in a wide variety of pathogen systems. surveillance data from California sea lions (serovar Pomona is one of the primary causes of strandings in this species, having caused cyclical Tazemetostat hydrobromide outbreaks since the mid\1980s that are associated with high morbidity and mortality (Greig, Gulland, & Kreuder,?2005; Lloyd\Smith et?al.,?2007; Prager et?al.,?2013). Animals with the disease, known as leptospirosis, present with clinical signs associated with DNA in the urinary tract (Polymerase Chain Reaction \ PCR) is the definitive diagnosis, obtaining samples to test via PCR is impossible often, so high antibody titers (Microscopic Agglutination Test \ MAT) and serum chemistry markers indicative of denotes prevalence, Se1 denotes the sensitivity of test 1, Sp1 denotes the specificity of test 1, and so on. The first term in this expression represents INPP5K antibody the probability of being infected and having a false\negative result for all three tests, while the second term represents the probability of being having and uninfected a true\negative result for all three tests. Similar logic can be used to find the probability of each diagnostic profile (b\h, Figure?S2), and the observed distribution of diagnostic profiles can be modeled by a multinomial likelihood, with probabilities for each class given by {Median prevalence estimates and 95% credible intervals (CrI) are shown for points A\E at a true prevalence of 10% (a), 50% (b), and 90% (c), with true prevalence shown as dashed black lines (Residuals for all parameter estimates (prevalence, sensitivities for tests 1C3, specificities for tests 1 and 2) using simulated samples (infection status in California sea lions admitted to The Marine Mammal Center (TMMC). TMMC is a marine mammal rehabilitation center that maintains a detailed database of health and medical diagnostic records for individual marine mammals stranding along the California coast. Clinical infections are diagnosed by clinicians at TMMC using the following diagnostic criteria: high serum MAT antibody titers ( 1:3,200) against serovar Pomona, DNA present in kidney or urine samples (tested via PCR; Wu et?al.,?2014), or serum chemistry markers indicative of kidney dysfunction (BUN? ?100?mg/dl, creatinine? ?2?mg/dl, sodium? ?155?phosphorus and meq/L? ?calcium; Colagross\Schouten, Mazet, Gulland, Miller, & Hietala,?2002; Greig et?al.,?2005). In this operational system, we judged that conditional independence Tazemetostat hydrobromide among tests was a reasonable.