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dc.contributor.authorLourenço, José
dc.contributor.authorRecker, Mario
dc.date.accessioned2015-12-17T11:50:35Z
dc.date.issued2013-10
dc.description.abstractMany infectious diseases are not maintained in a state of equilibrium but exhibit significant fluctuations in prevalence over time. For pathogens that consist of multiple antigenic types or strains, such as influenza, malaria or dengue, these fluctuations often take on the form of regular or irregular epidemic outbreaks in addition to oscillatory prevalence levels of the constituent strains. To explain the observed temporal dynamics and structuring in pathogen populations, epidemiological multi-strain models have commonly evoked strong immune interactions between strains as the predominant driver. Here, with specific reference to dengue, we show how spatially explicit, multi-strain systems can exhibit all of the described epidemiological dynamics even in the absence of immune competition. Instead, amplification of natural stochastic differences in disease transmission, can give rise to persistent oscillations comprising semi-regular epidemic outbreaks and sequential dominance of dengue's four serotypes. Not only can this mechanism explain observed differences in serotype and disease distributions between neighbouring geographical areas, it also has important implications for inferring the nature and epidemiological consequences of immune mediated competition in multi-strain pathogen systems.en_GB
dc.description.sponsorshipFundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologiaen_GB
dc.description.sponsorshipSiemens Portugalen_GB
dc.description.sponsorshipRoyal Societyen_GB
dc.identifier.citationPLoS Computational Biology, 2013, Vol. 9 (10), e1003308en_GB
dc.identifier.doi10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003308
dc.identifier.otherPCOMPBIOL-D-13-00579
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10871/19019
dc.language.isoenen_GB
dc.publisherPublic Library of Scienceen_GB
dc.relation.urlhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24204241en_GB
dc.rights© 2013 Lourenço, Recker. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.en_GB
dc.subjectCommunicable Diseasesen_GB
dc.subjectDengueen_GB
dc.subjectEpidemicsen_GB
dc.subjectHumansen_GB
dc.subjectModels, Biologicalen_GB
dc.titleNatural, persistent oscillations in a spatial multi-strain disease system with application to dengue.en_GB
dc.typeArticleen_GB
dc.date.available2015-12-17T11:50:35Z
dc.identifier.issn1553-734X
exeter.place-of-publicationUnited States
dc.descriptionThis is a freely-available open access publication. Please cite the published version which is available via the DOI link in this record.en_GB
dc.identifier.journalPLoS Computational Biologyen_GB


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