PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 94: Toxicology and Disease : Viruses and Epidemics
Wednesday, August 10, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 514 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Exploring alternative mechanisms for dengue fever dynamics.

Wearing, Helen^*,1, Rohani, Pejman¹, ¹ University of Georgia, Athens, GA

ABSTRACT- Dengue fever is one of the most important mosquito-borne diseases worldwide. In regions where more than one of the four dengue serotypes co-circulate incidence data exhibit erratic cycles in which the dominant serotype may change from one epidemic to the next. Sequential infections are possible since exposure to the dengue virus only confers permanent immunity to the infecting serotype. However, the precise immunological and ecological mechanisms underlying these dynamical patterns remain open to debate. One of the leading hypotheses is that the immune response to a secondary infection results in a process known as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), which may be responsible for the most severe, and sometimes fatal, manifestation of the disease, dengue haemorrhagic fever. In this talk, we outline a model framework for studying dengue dynamics and systematically explore the consequences of incorporating ADE and other mechanisms, such as variation in viral virulence, temporary cross-immunity and seasonal mosquito dynamics. We find that, while ADE is not essential to obtain observed patterns of dengue disease, temporary cross-immunity and seasonality in the vector population provide an alternative explanation of dengue outbreaks.

Key words: population dynamics, infectious disease, vector-host model