HIV competition dynamics over sexual networks: first comer advantage conserves founder effects.

ABSTRACT: Outside Africa, the global phylogeography of HIV is characterized by compartmentalized local epidemics that are typically dominated by a single subtype, which indicates strong founder effects. We hypothesized that the competition of viral strains at the epidemic level may involve an advantage of the resident strain that was the first to colonize a population. Such an effect would slow down the invasion of new strains, and thus also the diversification of the epidemic. We developed a stochastic modelling framework to simulate HIV epidemics over dynamic contact networks. We simulated epidemics in which the second strain was introduced into a population where the first strain had established a steady-state epidemic, and assessed whether, and on what time scale, the second strain was able to s

SUBMITTER: Ferdinandy B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4318579 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature