Developmental synchrony and extraordinary multiplication rates in pathogenic organisms.
Megan A Greischar1, Lauren M Childs2,3,4
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Summary
Estimating pathogen multiplication rates is crucial for understanding disease. Common methods can overestimate true rates due to sampling biases, impacting our understanding of infection dynamics.
Area of Science:
- Microbiology
- Infectious Disease Dynamics
- Parasitology
Background:
- Accurate estimation of pathogenic organism multiplication rates is vital for understanding disease progression, immune response, and therapeutic efficacy.
- Previous work indicated that standard methods for inferring multiplication rates in malaria parasites overestimate true values.
- It was unclear if this bias was specific to malaria or a broader issue across pathogens.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether biased multiplication rate estimates are a general problem across diverse pathogenic organisms.
- To generalize a within-host model to explore the impact of developmental biology on rate estimation.
- To identify factors contributing to overestimation or underestimation of pathogen growth rates.
Main Methods:
- Generalizing a within-host malaria model to accommodate different pathogen developmental biology.
- Simulating various patterns of developmental sampling bias and population synchrony.
- Analyzing the impact of these factors on the inferred fold change in pathogen abundance and multiplication rates.
Main Results:
- Developmental sampling bias, where detectability changes with age, consistently leads to overestimation of pathogen abundance.
- This bias obscures true growth rates and can even mask whether a population is growing or declining.
- Overestimation occurs when population synchrony decreases over time; increased synchrony can lead to underestimation.
Conclusions:
- Biased multiplication rate estimates are a widespread concern for pathogenic organisms, not limited to malaria.
- Accounting for varying patterns of population synchrony and developmental sampling bias is essential for accurate growth rate determination.
- Robust estimation of pathogen multiplication rates requires models that incorporate population dynamics and detectability changes over developmental stages.
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