Host mobility drives pathogen competition in spatially structured populations

PLoS Comput Biol. 2013;9(8):e1003169. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003169. Epub 2013 Aug 15.

Abstract

Interactions among multiple infectious agents are increasingly recognized as a fundamental issue in the understanding of key questions in public health regarding pathogen emergence, maintenance, and evolution. The full description of host-multipathogen systems is, however, challenged by the multiplicity of factors affecting the interaction dynamics and the resulting competition that may occur at different scales, from the within-host scale to the spatial structure and mobility of the host population. Here we study the dynamics of two competing pathogens in a structured host population and assess the impact of the mobility pattern of hosts on the pathogen competition. We model the spatial structure of the host population in terms of a metapopulation network and focus on two strains imported locally in the system and having the same transmission potential but different infectious periods. We find different scenarios leading to competitive success of either one of the strain or to the codominance of both strains in the system. The dominance of the strain characterized by the shorter or longer infectious period depends exclusively on the structure of the population and on the the mobility of hosts across patches. The proposed modeling framework allows the integration of other relevant epidemiological, environmental and demographic factors, opening the path to further mathematical and computational studies of the dynamics of multipathogen systems.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Coinfection / microbiology
  • Coinfection / virology
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Host-Pathogen Interactions / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Influenza A virus / pathogenicity
  • Influenza, Human / physiopathology
  • Microbial Interactions
  • Models, Biological*

Grants and funding

This work has been partially supported by NSF CMMI-1125095 and DTRA-1-0910039 award to AV; MINECO through Grant FIS2011-25167 to SM and YM; Comunidad de Aragón (Spain) through a grant to the group FENOL to SM and YM; the ERC Ideas contract no. ERC-2007-Stg204863 (EPIFOR) to VC and CP; the EC-ICT contract no. 231807 (EPIWORK) to AV and VC; the EC-Health contract no. 278433 (PREDEMICS) to VC and CP; the EC Proactive project MULTIPLEX (contract no. 317532) to SM, YM and AV; the Post Doctoral Fellowship of the French Embassy in Italy and Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to CP; the ANR contract no. ANR-12-MONU-0018 (HARMSFLU) to VC. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of any of the above funding agencies or governments. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.