Theodore Cohen

Education

MD; Duke University School of Medicine, 2001

MPH; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001

DPH; Harvard School of Public Health, 2006 

Ted Cohen, MD, MPH, DPH is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases. While Dr. Cohen's primary research focus is on the emergence and control of drug resistant tuberculosis, his work also extends to other pathogens of public health importance including HIV, influenza, S. pneumoniae, and SARS. He uses a combination of mathematical modeling techniques and traditional methods for epidemiological analysis in his research and is currently working on research projects in South America and sub-Saharan Africa.

Research Investigations

1. Lipsitch M, Cohen T, Cooper B, Robins JM, Ma S, James L, Gopalakrishna G, Chew SK, Tan CC, Samore MH, Fisman D, Murray M. Transmission dynamics and control of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Science 2003;300:1966-70.
2. Cohen T, Becerra MC, Murray MB. Isoniazid resistance and the future of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Microb Drug Resist 2004;10:280-5.
3. Cohen T, Murray M. Modeling epidemics of multidrug-resistant M. tuberculosis of heterogeneous fitness. Nat Med 2004;10:1117-21.
4. Cohen T, Murray M. Incident tuberculosis among recent US immigrants and exogenous reinfection. Emerg Infect Dis 2005;11:725-8.
5. Cohen T, Lipsitch M, Walensky RP, Murray M. Beneficial and perverse effects of isoniazid preventive therapy for latent tuberculosis infection in HIV-tuberculosis coinfected populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2006;103:7042-7.
6. Lipsitch M, Cohen T, Murray M, Levin BR. Antiviral Resistance and the Control of Pandemic Influenza. PLoS Med 2007;4:e15.
7. Cohen T, Colijn C, Finklea B, Murray M. Exogenous re-infection and the dynamics of tuberculosis epidemics: local effects in a network model of transmission. J R Soc Interface 2007;4:523-31.
8. Colijn C, Cohen T, Murray M. Emergent heterogeneity in declining tuberculosis epidemics. J Theor Biol 2007;247:765-74.
9. Cohen T, Colijn C, Finklea B, Wright A, Zignol M, Pym A, Murray M. Are survey-based estimates of the burden of drug resistant TB too low? Insight from a simulation study. PLoS ONE 2008;3:e2363.
10. Dagan R, Barkai G, Givon-Lavi N, Sharf AZ, Vardy D, Cohen T, Lipsitch M, Greenberg D. Seasonality of antibiotic-resistant streptococcus pneumoniae that causes acute otitis media: a clue for an antibiotic-restriction policy? J Infect Dis 2008;197:1094-102.
11. Cohen T, Colijn C, Wright A, Zignol M, Pym A, Murray M. Challenges in estimating the total burden of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2008;177(12):1302-6.
12. Cohen T, Lipsitch M. Too little of a good thing: a paradox of moderate infection control. Epidemiology. 2008;19:588-9.
13. Cohen T, Colijn C, Murray M. Modeling the effects of strain diversity and mechanisms of strain competition on the potential performance of new tuberculosis vaccines. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2008;105:16302-7.
14. Lin HH, Murray M, Cohen T, Colijn C, Ezzati M. Effects of smoking and solid-fuel use on COPD, lung cancer, and tuberculosis in China: a time-based, multiple risk factor, modelling study. Lancet 2008;372:1473-83.
15. Colijn C, Cohen T, Murray M. Latent coinfection and the maintenance of strain diversity. Bull Math Bio 2009;71:247-63.
16. Lipsitch M, Colijn C, Cohen T, Hanage WP, Fraser C. No Coexistence for Free: Neutral Null Models for Multistrain Pathogens. Epidemics 2009;1:2-13.
17. Blaya JA, Cohen T, Rodriguez P, Kim J, Fraser HS. Personal digital assistants to collect tuberculosis bacteriology data in Peru reduce delays, errors, and workload, and are acceptable to users: cluster randomized controlled trial. Int J Infect Dis 2009;13:410-8.
18. Lipsitch M, Lajous M, O’Hagan J, Cohen T, Miller JC, Goldstein E, Danon L, Wallinga J, Riley S, Dowell SF, Reed C, McCarron M. Use of Cumulative Incidence of Novel Influenza A/H1N1 in Foreign Travelers to Estimate Lower Bounds on Cumulative Incidence in Mexico. PLoS ONE 2009; 4(9):e6895.
19. Brooks-Pollock E, Cohen T, Murray M. The impact of realistic age structure in simple models of tuberculosis transmission. PLoS ONE 2010; 5(1):e8479.
20. Lipsitch M, Tchetgen E, Cohen T. Negative controls: A tool for detecting confounding and bias in observational studies. Epidemiology 2010; 21(3):383-8.
21. Colijn C, Cohen T, Fraser C, Hanage W, Goldstein E, Givon-Lavi N, Dagan R, Lipsitch M. What is the mechanism for persistent coexistence of drug-susceptible and drug-resistant strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae? J R Soc Interface 2010; 7(47):905-19.
22. Shin SS, Keshavjee K, Gelmanova IY, Atwood S, Franke MF, Mishustin SP, Strelis AK, Andreev YG, Pasechnikov AD, Barnashov A, Tonkel TP, Cohen T. Development of extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) during MDR-TB treatment. Am J Respir Crit Care Med (e-published ahead of print 2010 Apr 22). 
23. Cohen T, Hedt BL, Pagano M. Estimating the magnitude and direction of bias in tuberculosis drug resistance surveys conducted only in the public sector: a simulation study. BMC Public Health 2010 Jun 21;10:355.
24. Cohen T, Murray M, Wallengren K, Alvarez GG, Samuel EY, Wilson D. The prevalence and drug sensitivity of tuberculosis among patients dying in hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. PLoS Medicine 2010 Jun 22;7(6):e1000296.
25. Cohen T, Wilson D, Wallengren K, Samuel E, Murray M. Mixed strain M. tuberculosis infections among patients dying in hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. J Clin Microbiol 2011 Jan;49(1):385-8. Epub 2010 Oct 27.
26. Lin H, Shin S, Blaya JA, Zhang Z, Cegielski P, Contreras C, Asencios L, Bonilla C, Bayona J, Paciorek CJ, Cohen T. Assessing spatiotemporal patterns of multidrug-resistant and drug-sensitive tuberculosis in a South American setting. Epidemiol Infect 2010 Dec 23:1-10. [Epub ahead of print]
27. Goldhaber-Fiebert JD, Jeon CY, Cohen T, Murray M. Diabetes mellitus and tuberculosis in countries with high tuberculosis burdens: individual risks and social determinants. Int J Epidemiol 2011 Jan 20. [Epub ahead of print]
28. Hedt B, Laufer M, Cohen T. Drug resistance surveillance in resource poor settings: current methods and considerations for TB, HIV and malaria. Am J Trop Med Hyg 2011 Feb;84(2):192-9.
29. Gardner A, Cohen T, Carter EJ. Tuberculosis among participants of an academic global health medical exchange program. J Gen Int Med 2011 Feb 26. [Epub ahead of print].
30. Colijn C, Cohen T, Ganesh A, Murray M. Spontaneous emergence of multidrug resistant M. tuberculosis before and during therapy. PLoS ONE 2011 Mar 30:6(3):e18327 .
31. Sergeev R, Colijn C, Cohen T. Models to understand the population-level impact of mixed strain M. tuberculosis infections. J Theor Biol 2011 Jul 7;280(1):88-100. Epub 2011 Apr 16.
32. Mills HL, Cohen T, Colijn C. Modelling the performance of isoniazid preventive therapy for reducing TB in HIV endemic settings: the effects of network structure. J R Soc Interface 2011 Apr 27. [Epub ahead of print]
33. Brooks-Pollock E, Becerra M, Goldstein E, Cohen T, Murray M. Epidemiological inference from the distribution of tuberculosis cases in households in Lima, Peru. J Infect Dis 2011 Jun;203(11):1582-9.
34. Izu A, Cohen T, Murray M, Mitnick C, De Gruttola V. Bayesian methods of identifying and comparing branching tree structures: an application to development of resistant TB strains. Stat Med 2011 Jun 30. doi: 10.1002/sim.4287. [Epub ahead of print]
35. Cohen T, Murray M, Abubakar I, Zhang Z, Sloutsky A, Arteaga F, Chalco K, Franke MF, Becerra MF. Multiple introductions of multidrug resistant tuberculosis into households. Emerg Infect Dis 2011;17(6):969-75.
36. Lin HH, Langley I, Mwenda R, Doulla B, Egwaga S, Millington KA, Mann GH, Murray M, Squire SB, Cohen T. A modelling framework to support the selection and implementation of new tuberculosis diagnostic tools. Int J Tuber Lung Dis 2011;15(8):996-1004.
37. Yaesoubi R and Cohen T. Generalized Markov Models of Infectious Disease Spread: A Novel Framework for Developing Dynamic Health Policies. European J of Operational Research 2011; 215(3) 679-687.
38. Jenkins H, Zignol M, Cohen T. Quantifying the burden and trends of isoniazid resistant tuberculosis, 1994-2009. PLoS ONE 2011; 6(7):e22927.
39. Yaesoubi R and Cohen T. Dynamic Health Policies for Controlling the Spread of Emerging Infections: Influenza as an example. PLoS ONE 2011; 6(9):e24043.
40. Hedt B, van Leth F, Zignol M, Cobelens F, van Gemert W, Nhung NV, Lyepshina S, Egwaga S, Cohen T. Detecting local variation in the burden of multidrug resistance among new tuberculosis cases: application of Lot Quality Assurance Sampling. Epidemiology (accepted for publication).
41. Gegia M, Cohen T, Kalandadze I, Vashakidze L, Furin J. Outcomes among Tuberculosis Patients with Isoniazid Resistance in Georgia, 2007-2009. Int J Tuber Lung Dis (accepted for publication)
42. Robinson K, Cohen T, Colijn C. The dynamics of sexual contact networks: effects on disease spread and control. Theoretical Population Biology (accepted for publication).
43. Abubakar I, Stagg HR, Cohen T, Mangtani P, Rodrigues LC, Pimpin L, Watson JM, Squire SB, Zumla A. Controversies and unresolved issues in tuberculosis prevention and control: a low burden country perspective. Journal of Infectious Diseases (accepted for publication).
44. Lin HH, Shin SS, Contreras C, Asencios L, Paciorek CJ, Cohen T. Using spatiotemporal information to help predict multidrug resistance among tuberculosis patients receiving programmatic drug susceptibility testing. Emerging Infectious Diseases (accepted for publication).
45. Manjourides J, Lin HH, Shin S, Jeffrey C, Contreras C, Santa Cruz J, Jave O, Yagui M, Asencios L, Pagano M, Cohen T. Identifying multidrug resistant tuberculosis transmission hotspots using routinely collected data. Tuberculosis (accepted for publication)
46. Sergeev R, Colijn C, Murray M, Cohen T. Modeling the dynamic relationship between HIV and the risk of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Science Translational Medicine 2012 (accepted).

 Other peer-reviewed publications

1. Cohen T, Sommers B, Murray M. The effect of drug resistance on the fitness of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Lancet Infect Dis 2003;3:13-21.
2. Colijn C, Cohen T, Murray M. Mathematical Models of Tuberculosis: accomplishments and future challenges. Proceedings of BIOMAT 2006 - International Symposium on Mathematical and Computational Biology; 2006 Nov 27-30, Manaus, Brazil. World Scientific Publishing Co. 2007.
3. Cohen T, Dye C, Colijn C, Williams B, Murray M. Mathematical models of the epidemiology and control of drug resistant tuberculosis. Expert Review of Repsiratory Medicine 2009; 3:67-79.
4. Boulle A, Clayden P, Cohen K, Cohen T, Conradie F, Dong K, Geffen N, Grimwood A, Hurtado R, Kenyon C, Lawn S, Maartens G, Meintjes G, Mendelson M, Murray M, Rangaka M, Sanne I, Spencer D, Taljaard J, Variava E, Venter WDF, Wilson D. Prolonged deferral of antiretroviral therapy in the SAPIT trial: Did we need a clinical trial to tell us that this would increase mortality? S Afr Med J 2010 Sep; 100(9): 566. 

Book Chapters