Related papers: A model of host response to a multi-stage pathogen
Consider the following stochastic model for immune response. Each pathogen gives birth to a new pathogen at rate $\lambda$. When a new pathogen is born, it has the same type as its parent with probability $1 - r$. With probability $r$, a…
Epidemiological data on seasonal influenza show that the growth rate of the number of infected individuals can increase passing from one exponential growth rate to another one with a larger exponent. Such behavior is not described by…
The long-time dynamics of somatic adaptability in immune system is simulated by a simple physical model. The immune system described by the model exhibits a scale free behavior as is observed in living systems. The balance between the…
Pathogens drive changes in host immune systems that in turn exert pressure for pathogens to evolve. Quantifying and understanding this constant coevolutionary process has clear practical global health implications. Yet its relatively easier…
When the body gets infected by a pathogen the immune system develops pathogen-specific immunity. Induced immunity decays in time and years after recovery the host might become susceptible again. Exposure to the pathogen in the environment…
We analyse a model that describes the propagation of many pathogens within and between many species. A branching process approximation is used to compute the probability of disease outbreaks. Special cases of aquatic environments with two…
The spread of infectious disease and the evolution of antigenically distinct strains are often modeled separately, despite strong feedbacks mediated by host immune memory and heterogeneous contacts. To tackle this challenging problem, we…
In ecological systems heterogeneous interactions between pathogens take place simultaneously. This occurs, for instance, when two pathogens cooperate, while at the same time multiple strains of these pathogens co-circulate and compete.…
Viral infections trigger complex immune responses with heterogeneous outcomes shaped by nonlinear feedbacks. An ordinary differential equation model is developed to investigate immune response dynamics during viral infection, incorporating…
One of the aims of systems biology is to build multiple layered and multiple scale models of living systems which can efficiently describe phenomena occurring at various level of resolution. Such models should consist of layers of various…
When the body is infected, it mounts an acute inflammatory response to rid itself of the pathogens and restore health. Uncontrolled acute inflammation due to infection is defined clinically as Sepsis and can culminate in organ failure and…
An interesting inference drawn by some Covid-19 epidemiological models is that there exists a proportion of the population who are not susceptible to infection -- even at the start of the current pandemic. This paper introduces a model of…
Mathematical models of infectious disease transmission typically neglect within-host dynamics. Yet within-host dynamics - including pathogen replication, host immune responses, and interactions with microbiota - are crucial not only for…
We consider an epidemiological model that includes waning and boosting of immunity. Assuming that repeated exposure to the pathogen fully restores immunity, we derive an SIRS-type model with discrete and distributed delays. First we prove…
The immune system is a cognitive system of complexity comparable to the brain and its computational algorithms suggest new solutions to engineering problems or new ways of looking at these problems. Using immunological principles, a two (or…
In the studies of dynamics of pathogens and their interactions with a host immune system, an important role is played by the structure of antigenic variants associated with a pathogen. Using the example of a model of antigenic variation in…
We study a dynamical system model of an idiotypic immune network with a small number of degrees of freedom, mainly focusing on the effect of a threshold above which antibodies can recognise antibodies. The response of the system to…
Rapidly mutating pathogens may be able to persist in the population and reach an endemic equilibrium by escaping hosts' acquired immunity. For such diseases, multiple biological, environmental and population-level mechanisms determine the…
Mechanisms of immunity, and of the host-pathogen interactions in general are among the most fundamental problems of medicine, ecology, and evolution studies. Here, we present a microscopic, protein-level, sequence-based model of immune…
The process of programmed cell death, namely apoptosis, is a natural mechanism that regulates healthy tissue, multicellular structures, and homeostasis. An improved understanding of apoptosis can significantly enhance our knowledge of…