A social model for the evolution of sexually transmitted diseases

Sebastián Gonçalves, Marcelo Kuperman and Marcelo Ferreira da Costa Gomes

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2004, vol. 342, issue 1, 256-262

Abstract: We have introduced recently a model for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, in which the social behavior is incorporated as a key factor for the further propagation of the infection. The system may be regarded as a society of agents where in principle anyone can sexually interact with any other one in the population. The social behavior is taking into account by means of two parameters: the fraction of singles ρs and the promiscuity p. The promiscuity parameter defines the per individual daily probability of going out to look for a sexual partner, abandoning its eventual mate. In this contribution we show that the interaction between this two parameters give rise to a non-trivial epidemic threshold condition, when going from the homogeneous case (ρs=1) to heterogeneous cases (ρs<1). These results can have profound implication in the interpretation of real epidemic data.

Keywords: Social dynamics; Epidemic models; HIV; Numerical simulations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:342:y:2004:i:1:p:256-262

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2004.04.086

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