Related papers: Mathematically Modeling Spillover Dynamics of Emer…
Infectious zoonotic disease emergence, through spillover events, is of global concern and has the potential to cause significant harm to society, as recently demonstrated by COVID-19. More than 70% of the 400 infectious diseases that…
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…
Despite the enormous relevance of zoonotic infections to world- wide public health, and despite much effort in modeling individual zoonoses, a fundamental understanding of the disease dynamics and the nature of outbreaks arising in such…
Zoonotic disease transmission between animals and humans is a growing risk and the agricultural context acts as a likely point of transition, with individual heterogeneity acting as an important contributor. Thus, understanding the dynamics…
Land conversion and the resulting contact between domesticated and wild species has arguably been the single largest contributor to the emergence of novel epizootic and zoonotic diseases in the past century. An unintended consequence of…
The dynamics of epidemic spreading is often reduced to the single control parameter $R_0$, whose value, above or below unity, determines the state of the contagion. If, however, the pathogen evolves as it spreads, $R_0$ may change over…
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…
Diseases originating from wildlife pose a significant threat to global health, causing human and economic losses each year. The transmission of disease from animals to humans occurs at the interface between humans, livestock, and wildlife…
We numerically study disease dynamics that lead to the disease switching from one host species to another, resulting in diseases gaining the ability to infect, e.g., humans. Unlike previous studies that focused on branching processes…
Mathematical disease modelling has long operated under the assumption that any one infectious disease is caused by one transmissible pathogen spreading among a population. This paradigm has been useful in simplifying the biological reality…
As many emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases are associated with food animals, the relationship between available healthy food sources and population health and social stability has become evident. A recent example of the importance…
Viral zoonoses have emerged as the key drivers of recent pandemics. Human infection by zoonotic viruses are either spillover events -- isolated infections that fail to cause a widespread contagion -- or species jumps, where successful…
Human pathogens transmitted through environmental pathways are subject to stress and pressures outside of the host. These pressures may cause pathogen pathovars to diverge in their environmental persistence and their infectivity on an…
Cooperation and competition between pathogens can alter the amount of individuals affected by a co-infection. Nonetheless, the evolution of the pathogens' behavior has been overlooked. Here, we consider a co-evolutionary model where the…
Current modeling of infectious diseases allows for the study of complex and realistic scenarios that go from the population to the individual level of description. However, most epidemic models assume that the spreading process takes place…
Soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections, one of the most prevalent neglected tropical diseases, pose a significant threat to public health in tropical and subtropical areas. These parasites infect humans and animals through direct…
A key problem in modelling the evolution dynamics of infectious diseases is the mathematical representation of the mechanism of transmission of the contagion. Models with a finite number of subpopulations can be described via systems of…
Despite being similar in structure, functioning, and size viral pathogens enjoy very different mostly well-defined ways of life. They occupy their hosts for a few days (influenza), for a few weeks (measles), or even lifelong (HCV), which…
Epidemic disease spreading is conventionally often modelled and analyzed by means of rate and diffusion equations, following the paradigms of well-controlled chemical reactions and diffusive dynamics in a test tube. Yet, serious worries…
Infectious diseases in livestock are well-known to infect multiple hosts and persist through the combination of within- and between-host transmission pathways. Uncertainty remains about the epidemic consequences of the disease being…