Biology – Quantitative Biology – Populations and Evolution
Scientific paper
2008-02-14
Mathematical Biosciences. 2008, 215, 177-185
Biology
Quantitative Biology
Populations and Evolution
23 pages, 2 figures
Scientific paper
10.1016/j.mbs.2008.07.010
Heterogeneity is an important property of any population experiencing a disease. Here we apply general methods of the theory of heterogeneous populations to the simplest mathematical models in epidemiology. In particular, an SIR (susceptible-infective-removed) model is formulated and analyzed for different sources of heterogeneity. It is shown that a heterogeneous model can be reduced to a homogeneous model with a nonlinear transmission function, which is given in explicit form. The widely used power transmission function is deduced from a heterogeneous model with the initial gamma-distribution of the disease parameters. Therefore, a mechanistic derivation of the phenomenological model, which mimics reality very well, is provided. The equation for the final size of an epidemic for an arbitrary initial distribution is found. The implications of population heterogeneity are discussed, in particular, it is pointed out that usual moment-closure methods can lead to erroneous conclusions if applied for the study of the long-term behavior of the model.
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