Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences, University of Bristol, UK.
Epidemiol Infect. 2012 May;140(5):897-905. doi: 10.1017/S0950268811001385. Epub 2011 Jul 25.
SUMMARYMeningococcal meningitis is a major public health problem in a large area of sub-Saharan Africa known as the meningitis belt. Disease incidence increases every dry season, before dying out with the first rains of the year. Large epidemics, which can kill tens of thousands of people, occur frequently but unpredictably every 6-14 years. It has been suggested that these patterns may be attributable to complex interactions between the bacteria, human hosts and the environment. We used deterministic compartmental models to investigate how well simple model structures with seasonal forcing were able to qualitatively capture these patterns of disease. We showed that the complex and irregular timing of epidemics could be caused by the interaction of temporary immunity conferred by carriage of the bacteria together with seasonal changes in the transmissibility of infection. This suggests that population immunity is an important factor to include in models attempting to predict meningitis epidemics.
流脑是撒哈拉以南非洲一个大面积地区（脑膜炎带）的主要公共卫生问题。疾病发病率在每个旱季都会增加，然后随着当年的第一场雨而消失。每 6-14 年就会发生一次频繁但不可预测的大规模流行，这些流行可能会导致数万人死亡。有人认为，这些模式可能归因于细菌、人类宿主和环境之间的复杂相互作用。我们使用确定性房室模型来研究具有季节性强迫的简单模型结构在定性上捕捉这些疾病模式的能力。我们表明，流行的复杂和不规则时间可以由细菌携带产生的临时免疫力与感染传播性的季节性变化之间的相互作用引起。这表明，在试图预测脑膜炎流行的模型中，人群免疫力是一个重要的考虑因素。
