BSE: Incidences - regional and temporal patterns, prediction models

This contribution gives an overview on the BSE epidemic in cattle populations in Great Britain, Switzerland, and Germany pointing out the main descriptive epidemiological features of this disease. For this purpose BSE incidences are characterized with regard to their course in time, types of affected herds, regional variation, and to age of animals at onset of clinical disease. Additionally an approach for modeling the time course of the BSE epidemic is outlined. A construction of a mathematical-biological model offers opportunities to describe and to study single epidemiological components and their impact on the epidemic. Furthermore, in the BSE context prediction of future BSE incidences is a major point. Therefore, not only model construction as such should be considered but methodical problems and limitations of data available for statistical model estimation as well.