Caudill Lester, Lawson Barry
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Richmond, Virginia 23173 USA.
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Richmond, Virginia 23173 USA.
J Theor Biol. 2017 May 21;421:112-126. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2017.03.025. Epub 2017 Mar 30.
As the battle continues against hospital-acquired infections and the concurrent rise in antibiotic resistance among many of the major causative pathogens, there is a dire need to conduct controlled experiments, in order to compare proposed control strategies. However, cost, time, and ethical considerations make this evaluation strategy either impractical or impossible to implement with living patients. This paper presents a multi-scale model that offers promise as the basis for a tool to simulate these (and other) controlled experiments. This is a "unified" model in two important ways: (i) It combines inter-host and in-host dynamics into a single model, and (ii) it links two very different modeling approaches - agent-based modeling and differential equations - into a single model. The potential of this model as an instrument to combat antibiotic resistance in hospitals is demonstrated with numerical examples.
随着针对医院获得性感染的斗争持续进行，以及许多主要致病病原体的抗生素耐药性同时上升，迫切需要进行对照实验，以便比较提出的控制策略。然而，成本、时间和伦理考量使得这种评估策略对活体患者而言要么不切实际，要么无法实施。本文提出了一个多尺度模型，有望作为模拟这些（以及其他）对照实验的工具基础。该模型在两个重要方面是“统一”的：（i）它将宿主间和宿主体内动态整合到一个单一模型中，（ii）它将两种截然不同的建模方法——基于主体的建模和微分方程——链接到一个单一模型中。通过数值示例展示了该模型作为对抗医院抗生素耐药性工具的潜力。
