Modeling the early stages of within-host viral infection and clinical progression of Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome
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Viral zoonotic infections such as those caused by rabies virus, West Nile virus, and hantavirus are of serious public health concern, with each virus replicated within specific target cells. For example, hantavirus, which is transmitted through inhalation of infected rodent excreta, replicates within the microvascular endothelial cells of the lungs. It is important to understand the early stages of infection in order to develop effective preventive measures. During the early stages of infection, mathematical models are used to describe the dynamics of the stages of infection of target cells and the interferon effect on healthy target cells. A system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) with healthy target cells, latent cells, infected cells, bystander cells, and free virus serves as a framework to formulate more realistic stochastic models including continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) models, and stochastic differential equations (SDEs). In addition, a multi-type branching process approximation of the CTMC model, at the beginning stages of the infection, gives estimations on the probability of no infection which depends on the number of latent cells, infected cells, and free virus. After the infection is established, the variability of the time in the peak infection can be observed in the SDE models. The deterministic and stochastic models are extended to
A human disease caused by hantavirus is known as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) which has a mortality rate of about