Related papers: A Simple Model of Epidemics with Pathogen Mutation
The immune response to a pathogen has two basic features. The first is the expansion of a few pathogen-specific cells to form a population large enough to control the pathogen. The second is the process of differentiation of cells from an…
Many pathogens spread primarily via direct contact between infected and susceptible hosts. Thus, the patterns of contacts or contact network of a population fundamentally shapes the course of epidemics. While there is a robust and growing…
We introduce a modified SIR model with memory for the dynamics of epidemic spreading in a constant population of individuals. Each individual is in one of the states susceptible (${\bf S}$), infected (${\bf I}$) or recovered (${\bf R}$). In…
The recent pandemic emphasized the need to consider the role of human behavior in shaping epidemic dynamics. In particular, it is necessary to extend beyond the classical epidemiological structures to fully capture the interplay between the…
We study some simple mathematical models designed to test the following hypothesis: can a pathogen escape the immune system only because of its high probability of mutation? We propose both spatial and non-spatial models. In all of our…
A key scientific challenge during the outbreak of novel infectious diseases is to predict how the course of the epidemic changes under different countermeasures that limit interaction in the population. Most epidemiological models do not…
Between pandemics, the influenza virus exhibits periods of incremental evolution via a process known as antigenic drift. This process gives rise to a sequence of strains of the pathogen that are continuously replaced by newer strains,…
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…
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.…
Albeit epidemic models have evolved into powerful predictive tools for the spread of diseases and opinions, most assume memoryless agents and independent transmission channels. We develop an infection mechanism that is endowed with memory…
During infectious disease epidemics, pathogen transmission occurs in host populations made up of interacting subpopulations. Using stochastic simulation and analytical approximations, we examine how outbreak sizes in networked populations…
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…
We introduce and analyze a within-host dynamical model of the coevolution between rapidly mutating pathogens and the adaptive immune response. Pathogen mutation and a homeostatic constraint on lymphocytes both play a role in allowing the…
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…
Infectious disease transmission in human populations has a complex two-way interaction with changes in host behaviour. It is increasingly recognised that incorporating adaptive behavioural change into epidemic models is important for…
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…
We consider a spatial stochastic model for a pathogen population growing inside a host that attempts to eliminate the pathogens through its immune system. The pathogen population is divided into different types. A pathogen can either…
The propagation of infectious diseases and its impact on individuals play a major role in disease dynamics, and it is important to incorporate population heterogeneity into efforts to study diseases. As a simplistic but illustrative…
Risk-driven behavior provides a feedback mechanism through which individuals both shape and are collectively affected by an epidemic. We introduce a general and flexible compartmental model to study the effect of heterogeneity in the…
Epidemic spreading over populations networks has been an important subject of research for several decades, and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most epidemic outbreaks are likely to create multiple mutations during their spreading…