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Cercarial Transformation and in vitro Cultivation of Schistosoma mansoni Schistosomules
Published on: August 16, 2011
A deterministic model of schistosomiasis with spatial structure
Fabio Augusto Milner1, Ruijun Zhao
1Department of Mathematics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2067, USA. milner@math.purdue.edu
Abstract:
It has been observed in several settings that schistosomiasis is less prevalent in segments of river with fast current than in those with slow current. Some believe that this can be attributed to flush-away of intermediate host snails. However, free-swimming parasite larvae are very active in searching for suitable hosts, which indicates that the flush-away of larvae may also be very important. In this paper, the authors establish a model with spatial structure that characterizes the density change of parasites following the flush-away of larvae. It is shown that the reproductive number, which is an indicator of prevalence of parasitism, is a decreasing function of the river current velocity. Moreover, numerical simulations suggest that the mean parasite load is low when the velocity of river current flow is sufficiently high.
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