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Updated: Jan 25, 2026

Sexual Transmission of American Trypanosomes from Males and Females to Naive Mates
Published on: January 27, 2019
Sex-Specific Asymmetrical Attack Rates in Combined Sexual-Vectorial Transmission Epidemics
Ana Carolina W G de Barros1, Kaline G Santos2, Eduardo Massad3
1Fundação Getulio Vargas, Escola de Matemática Aplicada, Rio de Janeiro 22250-9000, Brazil. acwgdb@gmail.com.
Abstract:
In 2015-2016, South America went through the largest Zika epidemic in recorded history. One important aspect of this epidemic was the importance of sexual transmission in combination with the usual vectorial transmission, with asymmetrical transmissibilities between sexual partners depending on the type of sexual contact; this asymmetry manifested itself in data as an increased risk to women. We propose a mathematical model for the transmission of the Zika virus including sexual transmission via all forms of sexual contact, as well as vector transmission, assuming a constant availability of mosquitoes. From this model, we derive an expression for R 0 , which is used to study and analyze the relative contributions of the male to female sexual transmission route vis-à-vis vectorial transmission. We also perform Bayesian inference of the model's parameters using data from the 2016 Zika epidemic in Rio de Janeiro.
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