An agent-based modelling approach to investigate the impact of gender on tuberculosis transmission in Uganda

TL;DR

This study uses an agent-based model to explore how gender-related social factors influence tuberculosis transmission in Kampala, Uganda, revealing that equalizing gender-specific parameters reduces the male-to-female case ratio and overall TB cases.

Contribution

The paper introduces a gender-stratified, spatially detailed agent-based model to analyze gender disparities in TB transmission in a high-burden setting.

Findings

Equalizing gender-specific parameters reduces male-to-female TB case ratio.

Gender differences in social contacts and health-seeking behaviors influence TB transmission.

Counterfactual scenarios highlight the importance of population-scale factors in TB epidemiology.

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) is an airborne disease caused by the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2023, it returned to being the leading cause of death from an infectious agent globally, replacing COVID-19; in the nineteenth century, one in seven of all humans died of tuberculosis. More than 10 million people are diagnosed with TB every year. The majority of cases in adults occur in males (62.5% of all global adult cases in 2023, compared to 37.5% in females). The main reasons for males suffering from a higher burden of global TB cases, compared to females, may be in large part due to population-scale factors, such as employment type, the quantity and type of social contacts they make, and their health-seeking behaviours (e.g. differences in diagnostic and treatment delays between genders). To investigate which population-scale factors are most important in determining this higher TB burden in males, we have developed an age- and gender-stratified, spatially heterogeneous epidemiological agent-based model. We have focused specifically on Kampala, the capital of Uganda, which is a high-burden TB country. We considered counterfactual scenarios to elucidate the impact of gender on the epidemiology of TB. Setting disease progression parameters equal between the genders leads to a reduction in both male-to-female case ratio and total case numbers.