Modeling Biphasic Environmental Decay of Pathogens and Implications for Risk Analysis.

ABSTRACT: As the appreciation for the importance of the environment in infectious disease transmission has grown, so too has interest in pathogen fate and transport. Fate has been traditionally described by simple exponential decay, but there is increasing recognition that some pathogens demonstrate a biphasic pattern of decay-fast followed by slow. While many have attributed this behavior to population heterogeneity, we demonstrate that biphasic dynamics can arise through a number of plausible mechanisms. We examine the identifiability of a general model encompassing three such mechanisms: population heterogeneity, hardening off, and the existence of viable-but-not-culturable states. Although the models are not fully identifiable from longitudinal sampling studies of pathogen concentrations, we use

SUBMITTER: Brouwer AF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5789392 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature