Modeling co-infection of Ixodes tick-borne pathogens

  • Received: 06 August 2016 Revised: 30 December 2016 Published: 01 October 2017
  • MSC : Primary: 92D30; Secondary: 92B05

  • Ticks, including the Ixodes ricinus and Ixodes scapularis hard tick species, are regarded as the most common arthropod vectors of both human and animal diseases in Europe and the United States capable of transmitting a large number of bacteria, viruses and parasites. Since ticks in larval and nymphal stages share the same host community which can harbor multiple pathogens, they may be co-infected with two or more pathogens, with a subsequent high likelihood of co-transmission to humans or animals. This paper is devoted to the modeling of co-infection of tick-borne pathogens, with special focus on the co-infection of Borrelia burgdorferi (agent of Lyme disease) and Babesia microti (agent of human babesiosis). Considering the effect of co-infection, we illustrate that co-infection with B. burgdorferi increases the likelihood of B. microti transmission, by increasing the basic reproduction number of B. microti below the threshold smaller than one to be possibly above the threshold for persistence. The study confirms a mechanism of the ecological fitness paradox, the establishment of B. microti which has weak fitness (basic reproduction number less than one). Furthermore, co-infection could facilitate range expansion of both pathogens.

    Citation: Yijun Lou, Li Liu, Daozhou Gao. Modeling co-infection of Ixodes tick-borne pathogens[J]. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 2017, 14(5&6): 1301-1316. doi: 10.3934/mbe.2017067

    Related Papers:

  • Ticks, including the Ixodes ricinus and Ixodes scapularis hard tick species, are regarded as the most common arthropod vectors of both human and animal diseases in Europe and the United States capable of transmitting a large number of bacteria, viruses and parasites. Since ticks in larval and nymphal stages share the same host community which can harbor multiple pathogens, they may be co-infected with two or more pathogens, with a subsequent high likelihood of co-transmission to humans or animals. This paper is devoted to the modeling of co-infection of tick-borne pathogens, with special focus on the co-infection of Borrelia burgdorferi (agent of Lyme disease) and Babesia microti (agent of human babesiosis). Considering the effect of co-infection, we illustrate that co-infection with B. burgdorferi increases the likelihood of B. microti transmission, by increasing the basic reproduction number of B. microti below the threshold smaller than one to be possibly above the threshold for persistence. The study confirms a mechanism of the ecological fitness paradox, the establishment of B. microti which has weak fitness (basic reproduction number less than one). Furthermore, co-infection could facilitate range expansion of both pathogens.


    加载中
    [1] [ M. E. Adelson,R. V. S. Rao,R. C. Tilton, Prevalence of Borrelia burgdorferi, Bartonella spp., Babesia microti, and Anaplasma phagocytophila in Ixodes scapularis ticks collected in Northern New Jersey, J. Cli. Micro., 42 (2004): 2799-2801.
    [2] [ F. R. Adler,J. M. Pearce-Duvet,M. D. Dearing, How host population dynamics translate into time-lagged prevalence: An investigation of Sin Nombre virus in deer mice, Bull. Math. Biol., 70 (2008): 236-252.
    [3] [ C. Alvey,Z. Feng,J. Glasser, A model for the coupled disease dynamics of HIV and HSV-2 with mixing among and between genders, Math. Biosci., 265 (2015): 82-100.
    [4] [ E. A. Belongia, Epidemiology and impact of coinfections acquired from Ixodes ticks, Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Dis., 2 (2002): 265-273.
    [5] [ O. Diekmann,J. A. P. Heesterbeek,M. G. Roberts, The construction of next-generation matrices for compartmental epidemic models, J. R. Soc. Interface, 5 (2009): 1-13.
    [6] [ M. A. Diuk-Wasser,E. Vannier,P. J. Krause, Coinfection by Ixodes tick-borne pathogens: Ecological, epidemiological, and clinical consequences, Trends Para., 32 (2016): 30-42.
    [7] [ P. van den Driessche,J. Watmough, Reproduction numbers and sub-threshold endemic equilibria for compartmental models of disease transmission, Math. Biosci., 180 (2002): 29-48.
    [8] [ G. Fan,Y. Lou,H. R. Thieme,J. Wu, Stability and persistence in ODE models for populations with many stages, Math. Biosci. Eng., 12 (2015): 661-686.
    [9] [ G. Fan,H. R. Thieme,H. Zhu, Delay differential systems for tick population dynamics, J. Math. Biol., 71 (2015): 1017-1048.
    [10] [ D. Gao,Y. Lou,S. Ruan, A periodic Ross-Macdonald model in a patchy environment, Dis. Cont. Dyn. Syst.-B, 19 (2014): 3133-3145.
    [11] [ D. Gao,T. C. Porco,S. Ruan, Coinfection dynamics of two diseases in a single host population, J. Math. Anal. Appl., 442 (2016): 171-188.
    [12] [ E. J. Goldstein,C. Thompson,A. Spielman,P. J. Krause, Coinfecting deer-associated zoonoses: Lyme disease, babesiosis, and ehrlichiosis, Clin. Inf. Dis., 33 (2001): 676-685.
    [13] [ L. Halos,T. Jamal,R. Maillard, Evidence of Bartonella sp. in questing adult and nymphal Ixodes ricinus ticks from France and co-infection with Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato and Babesia sp., Veterinary Res., 361 (2005): 79-87.
    [14] [ J. M. Heffernan,Y. Lou,J. Wu, Range expansion of Ixodes scapularis ticks and of Borrelia burgdorferi by migratory birds, Dis. Cont. Dyn. Syst.-B, 19 (2014): 3147-3167.
    [15] [ M. H. Hersh, R. S. Ostfeld and D. J. McHenry et al., Co-infection of blacklegged ticks with Babesia microti and Borrelia burgdorferi is higher than expected and acquired from small mammal hosts, PloS one, 9 (2014), e99348.
    [16] [ M. W. Hirsch,H. L. Smith,X.-Q. Zhao, Chain transitivity, attractivity and strong repellors for semidynamical systems, J. Dyn. Differ. Equ., 13 (2001): 107-131.
    [17] [ Y. Lou, J. Wu and X. Wu, Impact of biodiversity and seasonality on Lyme-pathogen transmission, Theo. Biol. Med. Modell., 11 (2014), 50.
    [18] [ Y. Lou,X.-Q. Zhao, Modelling malaria control by introduction of larvivorous fish, Bull. Math. Biol., 73 (2011): 2384-2407.
    [19] [ P. D. Mitchell,K. D. Reed,J. M. Hofkes, Immunoserologic evidence of coinfection with Borrelia burgdorferi, Babesia microti, and human granulocytic Ehrlichia species in residents of Wisconsin and Minnesota, J. Cli. Biol., 34 (1996): 724-727.
    [20] [ S. Moutailler, C. V. Moro and E. Vaumourin et al., Co-infection of ticks: The rule rather than the exception, PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis., 10 (2016), e0004539.
    [21] [ J. M. Mutua,F. B. Wang,N. K. Vaidya, Modeling malaria and typhoid fever co-infection dynamics, Math. Biosci., 264 (2015): 128-144.
    [22] [ N. H. Ogden, L. St-Onge and I. K. Barker et al., Risk maps for range expansion of the Lyme disease vector, Ixodes scapularis in Canada now and with climate change, Int. J. Heal. Geog., 7 (2008), 24.
    [23] [ A. R. Plourde,E. M. Bloch, A literature review of Zika virus, Emerg. Inf. Dise., 22 (2016): 1185-1192.
    [24] [ H. C. Slater, M. Gambhir, P. E. Parham and E. Michael, Modelling co-infection with malaria and lymphatic filariasis, PLoS Comput. Biol., 9 (2013), e1003096, 14pp.
    [25] [ H. L. Smith, Monotone Dynamical Systems: An Introduction to the Theory of Competitive and Cooperative Systems, Providence, RI: Math. Surveys Monogr., 41, AMS, 1995.
    [26] [ F. E. Steiner,R. R. Pinger,C. N. Vann, Infection and co-infection rates of Anaplasma phagocytophilum variants, Babesia spp., Borrelia burgdorferi, and the rickettsial endosymbiont in Ixodes scapularis (Acari: Ixodidae) from sites in Indiana, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, J. Med. Entom., 45 (2008): 289-297.
    [27] [ G. Stinco,S. Bergamo, Impact of co-infections in Lyme disease, Open Dermatology J., 10 (2016): 55-61.
    [28] [ S. J. Swanson,D. Neitzel,K. D. Reed,E. A. Belongia, Coinfections acquired from Ixodes ticks, Cli. Micro. Rev., 19 (2006): 708-727.
    [29] [ B. Tang, Y. Xiao and J. Wu, Implication of vaccination against dengue for Zika outbreak, Sci. Rep., 6 (2016), 35623.
    [30] [ H. R. Thieme, Convergence results and a Poincare-Bendixson trichotomy for asymptotically autonomous differential equations, J. Math. Biol., 30 (1992): 755-763.
    [31] [ W. Wang,X.-Q. Zhao, Spatial invasion threshold of Lyme disease, SIAM J. Appl. Math., 75 (2015): 1142-1170.
    [32] [ X. Wu,V. R. Duvvuri,Y. Lou, Developing a temperature-driven map of the basic reproductive number of the emerging tick vector of Lyme disease Ixodes scapularis in Canada, J. Theo. Biol., 319 (2013): 50-61.
    [33] [ X. -Q. Zhao, Dynamical Systems in Population Biology, New York: Springer, 2003.
    [34] [ X.-Q. Zhao,Z. Jing, Global asymptotic behavior in some cooperative systems of functional-differential equations, Canad. Appl. Math. Quart., 4 (1996): 421-444.
  • Reader Comments
  • © 2017 the Author(s), licensee AIMS Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)
通讯作者: 陈斌, bchen63@163.com
  • 1. 

    沈阳化工大学材料科学与工程学院 沈阳 110142

  1. 本站搜索
  2. 百度学术搜索
  3. 万方数据库搜索
  4. CNKI搜索

Metrics

Article views(2714) PDF downloads(619) Cited by(13)

Article outline

Figures and Tables

Figures(3)  /  Tables(2)

Other Articles By Authors

/

DownLoad:  Full-Size Img  PowerPoint
Return
Return

Catalog