A Novel Stochastic Multi-Scale Model of <i>Francisella tularensis</i> Infection to Predict Risk of Infection in a Laboratory.

ABSTRACT: We present a multi-scale model of the within-phagocyte, within-host and population-level infection dynamics of Francisella tularensis, which extends the mechanistic one proposed by Wood et al. (2014). Our multi-scale model incorporates key aspects of the interaction between host phagocytes and extracellular bacteria, accounts for inter-phagocyte variability in the number of bacteria released upon phagocyte rupture, and allows one to compute the probability of response, and mean time until response, of an infected individual as a function of the initial infection dose. A Bayesian approach is applied to parameterize both the within-phagocyte and within-host models using infection data. Finally, we show how dose response probabilities at the individual level can be used to estimate the

SUBMITTER: Carruthers J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6043654 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature