Phenotypic variations in persistence and infectivity between and within environmentally transmitted pathogen populations impact population-level epidemic dynamics.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Human pathogens transmitted through environmental pathways are subject to stress and pressures outside of the host. These pressures may cause pathogen pathovars to diverge in their environmental persistence and their infectivity on an evolutionary time-scale. On a shorter time-scale, a single-genotype pathogen population may display wide variation in persistence times and exhibit biphasic decay.

Methods

We use a transmission modeling framework to develop an infectious disease model with biphasic pathogen decay. We take a differential algebra approach to assessing model identifiability, calculate basic reproduction numbers by the next generation method, and use simulation to explore model dynamics.

Results

For both long and short time-scales, we demonstrate

SUBMITTER: Brouwer AF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6530054 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature