Estimating contact process saturation in sylvatic transmission of Trypanosoma cruzi in the United States.

ABSTRACT: Although it has been known for nearly a century that strains of Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent for Chagas' disease, are enzootic in the southern U.S., much remains unknown about the dynamics of its transmission in the sylvatic cycles that maintain it, including the relative importance of different transmission routes. Mathematical models can fill in gaps where field and lab data are difficult to collect, but they need as inputs the values of certain key demographic and epidemiological quantities which parametrize the models. In particular, they determine whether saturation occurs in the contact processes that communicate the infection between the two populations. Concentrating on raccoons, opossums, and woodrats as hosts in Texas and the southeastern U.S., and the vectors Triatom

SUBMITTER: Kribs-Zaleta C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2860507 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature