Markovian approach to tackle the interaction of simultaneous diseases

Area of Science:

• Epidemiology
• Mathematical Biology
• Disease Dynamics

Background:

• Interactions between pathogens, such as cooperation or competition, influence disease outbreaks and pathogen coexistence.
• Understanding these complex dynamics is crucial for predicting and controlling infectious diseases in populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a general and versatile benchmark for studying cooperative and competitive interacting diseases.
• To characterize explosive transitions in disease-free and epidemic regimes due to pathogen cooperation.
• To analytically derive the transition point between pathogen dominance and coexistence in competing disease scenarios.

Main Methods:

• Development of a general benchmark model for interacting disease dynamics.
• Characterization of explosive transitions using mathematical analysis.
• Analytical derivation of transition points for competing pathogens.

Main Results:

• Identified critical degrees of cooperation leading to abrupt disease transitions.
• Characterized the mutually exclusive case for competing diseases.
• Derived the analytical transition point between single pathogen dominance and coexistence regimes.

Conclusions:

• The proposed benchmark provides a framework for analyzing complex pathogen interactions.
• Understanding cooperation is key to predicting abrupt disease outbreaks.
• The framework allows for the analysis of disease dynamics as competition levels change.