Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
7.1
THE COMPLEXITY OF DYNAMIC
HOST NETWORKS
Steve W. Cole
David E. Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA AIDS Institute,
the Norman Cousins Center, and UCLA Molecular
Biology Institute, University of California, Los Angeles
Mathematical epidemiology has generally modeled host populations as homogeneous
networks with static linkage structures. However, real hosts react biologically and behav-
iorally to disease in ways that dynamically alter network connectivity. This chapter sum-
marizes results from agent-based modeling of disease-reactive social networks and their
impact on the propagation of infections. Results show that simple distributed rules about
"sickness behavior" can interact with nonhomogeneous social networks to destabilize
propagation kinetics, augment biological immune responses, and favor the evolution of
biological structures and cultural norms that function as a network-level social immune
response.
1.
INTRODUCTION
Disease is generally analyzed as a biological process, but sickness is also an
experience. This chapter analyzes the impact of that experience on the course of
epidemics with an eye toward its evolutionary significance. A large research
literature has sought to understand the "lifestyle strategies" of parasites (1), but
the hosts they colonize are often conceptualized as vacuous mobile resource
patches that incubate pathogens and disseminate them randomly throughout
Address correspondence to: Steve W. Cole, Division of Hematology-Oncology, Department of
Medicine, 11-934 Factor Building, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles CA
90095-1678 (coles@ucla.edu).
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