 Age profile of immunity to influenza: Effect of original antigenic sinAdam J. Kucharski and Julia R. Gog Theoretical Population Biology, 2012, vol. 81, issue 2, 102-112 Abstract: When multiple infections are possible during an individual’s lifetime, as with influenza, a host’s history of infection and immunity will determine the result of future exposures. In turn, the suite of varying individual infection histories will shape the population level dynamics of the disease. Exploring the consequences of precisely how immunity is acquired using mathematical models has proven challenging though: if n strains have circulated previously, there are 2n combinations of past infection to consider. However, by using an age-structured mathematical model of a disease with multiple strains, we can examine the population immune profile without explicitly keeping track of all possible infection histories. This framework allows previously unknown consequences of assumptions about immune acquisition to be observed. In particular, we see that ‘original antigenic sin’ can reduce immunity in some age groups: these immune blind spots could be responsible for the unexpectedly high severity of certain past influenza epidemics. Keywords: Multi-strain model; Cross-immunity; Age structure; Original antigenic sin; Influenza; Epidemic (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:81:y:2012:i:2:p:102-112 DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2011.12.006 Access Statistics for this article Theoretical Population Biology is currently edited by Jeremy Van Cleve More articles in Theoretical Population Biology from Elsevier |
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