DTK-Dengue: A new agent-based model of dengue virus transmission dynamics

Abstract

Dengue virus (DENV) is a pathogen spread byAedes mosquitoes that has a considerable impact on global health. Agent-based models can be used to explicitly represent factors that are difficult to measure empirically, by focusing on specific aspects of DENV transmission dynamics that influence spread in a particular location. We present a new agent-based model for DENV dynamics, DTK-Dengue, that can be readily applied to new locations and to a diverse set of goals. It extends the vector-borne disease module in the Institute for Disease Modelling's Epidemiological Modeling Disease Transmission Kernel (EMOD-DTK) to model DENV dynamics. There are three key modifications present in DTK-Dengue: 1) modifications to how climatic variables influence vector development for Aedes mosquitoes, 2) updates to adult vector behavior to make them more similar to Aedes, and 3) the inclusion of four DENV serotypes, including their effects on human immunity and symptoms. We demonstrate DTK-Dengue's capabilities by fitting the model to four interrelated datasets: total and serotype-specific dengue incidences between January 2007 and December 2008 from San Juan, Puerto Rico; the age distribution of reported dengue cases in Puerto Rico during 2007; and the number of adult female Ae. aegypti trapped in two neighborhoods of San Juan between November 2007 and December 2008. The model replicated broad patterns in the reference data, including a correlation between vector population dynamics and rainfall, appropriate seasonality in the reported incidence, greater circulation of DENV-3 than any other serotype, and an inverse relationship between age and the proportion of cases associated with each age group over 20 years old. This exercise demonstrates the potential for DTK-Dengue to assimilate multiple types of epidemiologic data into a realistic portrayal of DENV transmission dynamics. Due to the open availability of the DTK-Dengue software and the availability of numerous other modules for modeling disease transmission and control from EMOD-DTK, this new model has potential for a diverse range of future applications in a wide variety of settings.. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.The copyright holder for this preprint (which . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/376533 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Jul. 25, 2018; 2 INTRODUCTIONWith as many as 390 million infections in a given year and no evidence of decline, dengue virus (DENV) poses an ever-increasing public health problem (Bhatt et al., 2013). Although some DENV infections remain asymptomatic or cause clinically inapparent symptoms, others come with more burdensome manifestations, including dengue fever (DF), dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), and dengue shock syndrome (DSS). DENV is a mosquito-borne flavivirus with four distinct serotypes. Infection with one serotype is believed to cause lifelong homologous immunity, as well as ...

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