Mathematical Biosciences

With significant population fractions in many societies who refuse vaccines, it is important to reconsider how vaccination is incorporated into compartmental epidemiology models. It is still most common to apply the vaccination rate to the entire class of susceptibles, rather than to use the more realistic assumption that the vaccination rate function should depend only on the population of susceptibles who are willing and able to receive a vaccination. This study uses a simple generic disease m...

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is considerably more severe among individuals infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), leading to higher parasite loads, frequent relapse, and increased mortality. To examine the epidemiological interaction between the two diseases, we develop a comprehensive VL-HIV co-infection model that incorporates transmission pathways, treatment effects, and relapse dynamics. The model is parameterized using real-time data from Bihar, India, including monthly VL-only an...

We present results from the second season of Influcast, a multi-model collaborative forecasting hub focused on influenza in Italy. During the 2024/25 winter season, Influcast collected one-to four-week-ahead probabilistic forecasts of influenza-like illness (ILI) incidence alongside influenza A and B ILI+ incidence signals. New ILI+ targets were constructed integrating syndromic surveillance data with virological detections collected weekly by the Italian National Institute of Health. Forecasts ...

Wastewater is increasingly being recognized as an important data stream that can contribute to infectious disease surveillance and forecasting. With this recognition, a growing number of statistical inference approaches are being developed to use wastewater data to provide quantitative insights into epidemiological dynamics. However, few existing approaches have allowed for systematic integration of data streams for inference, for example by combining case incidence data and/or serological data ...

Background: Human-to-human transmission of pathogens fundamentally depends on interactions among infectious and susceptible individuals, yet traditional population-scale models often overlook the stochastic, behaviour-driven, and highly heterogeneous nature of these interactions. Methods: Here, we develop a large-scale actor-based model capturing early epidemic dynamics of a novel respiratory pathogen on dynamic contact networks. We build these networks upon explicitly integrating detailed demog...

Nipah virus (NiV) is a sporadic yet extremely deadly zoonotic pathogen, with reported case fatality rates of 40%-75% in impacted areas. Prolonged incubation, documented relapse, and delayed-onset encephalitis following apparent recovery indicate that NiV dynamics are influenced by intricate temporal processes. However, mechanistic contributions of these processes to epidemic persistence remain poorly understood. In this study, we develop and analyze a delay differential equation model for NiV tr...

IntroductionAtmospheric conditions under climate change increase pressure on healthcare systems. Especially, the intensive care units (ICU) are vulnerable due to low buffer capacity and high utilization rates. MethodsDaily ICU cases from 2009 to 2023 were derived from the German statutory health insurance data of eleven regional AOK insurances. Cases were stratified by age and sex. Generalized additive models were used to investigate the associations between daily ICU cases and lagged atmospher...

Suicide is one of the worlds leading public health problems, with more than 720,000 deaths annually. Suicide has traditionally been studied from an individual perspective. However, research has increasingly highlighted the influence of community-level factors on suicide risk. This study aimed to (1) analyse the spatial distribution of suicide mortality at the provincial level in Spain (2018-2022); (2) perform stratified analyses by sex and age group; and (3) compare suicide risk across differen...

Hybrid controlled trials (HCTs) incorporate real-world data into randomized controlled trials (RCTs) by augmenting the internal control arm with patients receiving the same treatment in routine care. Beyond increasing power, HCTs may improve recruitment by supporting unequal randomization ratios that increase patient access to experimental treatments. However, HCT validity is threatened by bias from unmeasured confounding due to lack of randomization of external controls, leading to outcome non-...

BackgroundLarval source management (LSM) was once central to malaria control before insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying dominated. Renewed interest in LSM raises questions about its effectiveness in rural Africa, where habitats are dispersed, and vector species contribute unequally, and whether species-targeted larviciding could offer greater gains than broadcast approaches. MethodsThis modelling study quantified the potential impact of larviciding in African settings where mu...

Ambient air pollution has been associated with increased incidence of chronic disease and is estimated to contribute towards 4.2 million early deaths annually. Whilst the health impacts are well described, less is understood about the underlying biological mechanisms, particularly when considering the co-occurrence of multiple pollutants. Using an atmospheric chemistry transportation model (EMEP4UK), we generate pre-baseline sampling pollution exposure estimates for eight pollutants in Generatio...

Introduction: Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) including Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), multiple sclerosis (MS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and non-AD dementias share chronic neuroinflammatory mechanisms that contribute to neuronal injury and disease progression. While anti-inflammatory therapies (AITs) are associated with reduced neurodegenerative disease risk, knowledge regarding the impact of biological sex and treatment duration across multiple NDDs remains li...

BackgroundNo randomized clinical trial comparing the most established new modalities of treatment for patients with localized prostate cancer has been published, and there is scarce comparative effectiveness research assessing Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs). Objectiveto compare the impact of active surveillance, robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP), Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), and real-time brachytherapy on patients, through PROMs, from pre-treatment to five years...

Biological ageing begins before birth, with early-life exposures shaping late-life health. These exposures drive health inequities early, yet specific exposures and the composition of the ageing exposome remain largely undefined. This gap may persist as the field lacks agnostic investigations accounting for non-linearity, interactions and subtle signals. We aimed to identify exposures predictive of epigenetic ageing accumulated during childhood and adolescence and explore the composition of the...

ObjectivesGrowth Mindset and Grit have been proposed as key psychological resources for resilience and adaptation, yet their manifestation and social distribution in later life remain underexplored. This study examines the structure, distribution, and correlates of Growth Mindset and Grit in older adulthood using proxy indicators in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). MethodsProxy indicators reflecting learning behaviour, personality traits, affect, and beliefs were used to derive ...

OBJECTIVEUsing two cohorts and synthetic datasets, we estimated effects of prospectively reported alcohol use on memory outcomes across middle age. METHODSData were from National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (NLSY79, n=7540, alcohol reports from ages 18-26), Health and Retirement Study (HRS age 50-56 at enrollment, n=13,090), and a synthetic cohort matching early life exposure information from 3,259 NLSY79 participants to later life memory information from 5,451 HRS participants. Covariate-...

Students who frequently miss school are at greater risk for academic difficulty. High levels of absenteeism as early as kindergarten have been associated with long-term consequences, such as low reading proficiency in Grade 3 and low academic achievement in Grade 5, both of which have been associated with lower rates of high school graduation and enrollment in post-secondary education. The prevalence of school absenteeism has increased significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic and there have bee...

Objective: Minimum unit pricing (MUP) aims to reduce use of cheap, high strength alcoholic beverages that drive harm, yet concerns remain about inequitable effects for structurally vulnerable groups. As part of the Costs, Harms, Expenditures and Alcohol Prices (CHEAP) study, we linked individual-level, product-specific alcohol consumption data from a customized survey with provincial retail price data to estimate prices per standard drink (PPSD) and examine their association with alcohol-related...

Background and ObjectivesAssociations of common infections with Alzheimer disease (AD) risk have been reported. A hypothesized mechanism to explain these is cerebral amyloid-beta (A{beta}) aggregation as a defence in response to infection, with subsequent tau accumulation. However, few studies have assessed associations of infections with tau and A{beta} pathology. We investigated associations of serological measures of several common infections with plasma p-tau217 and A{beta} status measured b...

BackgroundStroke is a leading cause of mortality and disability globally. However, information about stroke burden in the Philippines is limited. We sought to analyze stroke burden in the Philippines from 1990 to 2023. MethodsIncidence, prevalence, mortality, and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023 data were used as indicators to analyze the burden of stroke by sex and age. Temporal trends in both crude and age-standardized rates were an...