Latora Vito, Nyamba André, Simpore Jacques, Sylvette Bahiré, Diane Sandwidi, Sylvére Bukiki, Musumeci Salvatore
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Catania and INFN-Catania, Catania, Italy.
J Med Virol. 2006 Jun;78(6):724-9. doi: 10.1002/jmv.20614.
Two thirds of the people who have been infected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the world live in Sub-Saharan African countries. The results of a study measuring the degree distribution of the network of sexual contacts in Burkina Faso are described. Such a network is responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and in particular of HIV. It has been found that the number of different sexual partners reported by males is a power law distribution with an exponent gamma = 2.9 (0.1). This is consistent with the degree distribution of scale-free networks. On the other hand, the females can be divided into two groups: the prostitutes with an average of 400 different partners per year, and females with a stable partner, having a rapidly decreasing degree distribution. Such a result may have important implications on the control of sexually transmitted diseases and in particular of HIV. Since scale-free networks have no epidemic threshold, a campaign based on prevention and anti-viral treatment of few highly connected nodes can be more successful than any policy based on enlarged but random distribution of the available anti-viral treatments.
全球三分之二的人类免疫缺陷病毒（HIV）感染者生活在撒哈拉以南非洲国家。本文描述了一项测量布基纳法索性接触网络度分布的研究结果。这样的网络是性传播疾病，尤其是HIV传播的原因。研究发现，男性报告的不同性伴侣数量呈幂律分布，指数γ = 2.9（0.1）。这与无标度网络的度分布一致。另一方面，女性可分为两组：平均每年有400个不同伴侣的妓女，以及有固定伴侣的女性，其度分布迅速下降。这一结果可能对性传播疾病，尤其是HIV的控制具有重要意义。由于无标度网络没有流行阈值，针对少数高度连接节点进行预防和抗病毒治疗的活动可能比基于扩大但随机分配现有抗病毒治疗的任何政策都更成功。
