TY - JOUR
T1 - From within host dynamics to the epidemiology of infectious disease
T2 - Scientific overview and challenges
AU - Gutierrez, Juan B.
AU - Galinski, Mary R.
AU - Cantrell, Stephen
AU - Voit, Eberhard O.
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was funded, in part, by Federal funds from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services under contract no. HHSN272201200031C, and the International Centers for Excellence in Malaria Research—Center for non-Amazonian regions of Latin America (CLAIM), NIH's NIAID cooperative agreement U19AI089702. The workshop From within Host Dynamics to the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, where some of this material was presented, was held at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute at Ohio State University in April 2014 with support from the National Science Foundation, grant DMS-0931642.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 .
PY - 2015/12/1
Y1 - 2015/12/1
N2 - Since their earliest days, humans have been struggling with infectious diseases. Caused by viruses, bacteria, protozoa, or even higher organisms like worms, these diseases depend critically on numerous intricate interactions between parasites and hosts, and while we have learned much about these interactions, many details are still obscure. It is evident that the combined host-parasite dynamics constitutes a complex system that involves components and processes at multiple scales of time, space, and biological organization. At one end of this hierarchy we know of individual molecules that play crucial roles for the survival of a parasite or for the response and survival of its host. At the other end, one realizes that the spread of infectious diseases by far exceeds specific locales and, due to today's easy travel of hosts carrying a multitude of organisms, can quickly reach global proportions. The community of mathematical modelers has been addressing specific aspects of infectious diseases for a long time. Most of these efforts have focused on one or two select scales of a multi-level disease and used quite different computational approaches. This restriction to a molecular, physiological, or epidemiological level was prudent, as it has produced solid pillars of a foundation from which it might eventually be possible to launch comprehensive, multi-scale modeling efforts that make full use of the recent advances in biology and, in particular, the various high-throughput methodologies accompanying the emerging -omics revolution. This special issue contains contributions from biologists and modelers, most of whom presented and discussed their work at the workshop From within Host Dynamics to the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, which was held at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute at Ohio State University in April 2014. These contributions highlight some of the forays into a deeper understanding of the dynamics between parasites and their hosts, and the consequences of this dynamics for the spread and treatment of infectious diseases.
AB - Since their earliest days, humans have been struggling with infectious diseases. Caused by viruses, bacteria, protozoa, or even higher organisms like worms, these diseases depend critically on numerous intricate interactions between parasites and hosts, and while we have learned much about these interactions, many details are still obscure. It is evident that the combined host-parasite dynamics constitutes a complex system that involves components and processes at multiple scales of time, space, and biological organization. At one end of this hierarchy we know of individual molecules that play crucial roles for the survival of a parasite or for the response and survival of its host. At the other end, one realizes that the spread of infectious diseases by far exceeds specific locales and, due to today's easy travel of hosts carrying a multitude of organisms, can quickly reach global proportions. The community of mathematical modelers has been addressing specific aspects of infectious diseases for a long time. Most of these efforts have focused on one or two select scales of a multi-level disease and used quite different computational approaches. This restriction to a molecular, physiological, or epidemiological level was prudent, as it has produced solid pillars of a foundation from which it might eventually be possible to launch comprehensive, multi-scale modeling efforts that make full use of the recent advances in biology and, in particular, the various high-throughput methodologies accompanying the emerging -omics revolution. This special issue contains contributions from biologists and modelers, most of whom presented and discussed their work at the workshop From within Host Dynamics to the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, which was held at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute at Ohio State University in April 2014. These contributions highlight some of the forays into a deeper understanding of the dynamics between parasites and their hosts, and the consequences of this dynamics for the spread and treatment of infectious diseases.
KW - Epidemiology
KW - Host-parasite interactions
KW - Infectious diseases
KW - Malaria
KW - Modeling
KW - Systems biology
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U2 - 10.1016/j.mbs.2015.10.002
DO - 10.1016/j.mbs.2015.10.002
M3 - Editorial
C2 - 26474512
AN - SCOPUS:84949529520
VL - 270
SP - 143
EP - 155
JO - Mathematical Biosciences
JF - Mathematical Biosciences
SN - 0025-5564
ER -