An immuno-epidemiological model with threshold delay: a study of the effects of multiple exposures to a pathogen.
Title | An immuno-epidemiological model with threshold delay: a study of the effects of multiple exposures to a pathogen. |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2014 |
Authors | Qesmi R, Heffernan JM, Wu J |
Journal | Journal of mathematical biology |
Date Published | 2014 Feb 28 |
ISSN | 1432-1416 |
Abstract | An immuno-epidemiological model of pathogen transmission is developed. This model incorporates two main features: (i) the epidemiological model includes within-host pathogen dynamics for an infectious disease, (ii) the susceptible individuals to the infection experience a series of exposures via the pathogen before becoming infectious. It is shown that this model leads naturally to a system of differential delay equations of the threshold type and that these equations can be transformed, in a biologically natural way, to differential equations with state-dependent delay. An interesting dynamical behavior of the model is the bistability phenomena, when the basic reproductive ratio [Formula: see text] is less than unity, which raises many new challenges to effective infection control. |
DOI | 10.1007/s00285-014-0764-0 |
Alternate Journal | J Math Biol |