Human Malaria Epidemiology
Exposure, Infection, Disease, Immunity, Infectiousness, Diagnostics and Detection
Human malaria is any disease caused by infection with malaria parasites. Here, we are focused on Plasmodium falciparum epidemiology.
The focus of these essays is the study of malaria using mathematical models. In most cases, a “malaria model” means that the state space for the vertebrate host model component has features that resemble malaria. The representation of malaria biology through mathematics present several challenges: how to handle superinfection and the complex time course of an infection; how to build an accurate state space for infection and immunity; how to model disease; how to handle age and time; and how to handle the overwhelming complexity.
Building Blocks
Some of the models developed for malaria focused on specific aspects of malaria, and these studies have developed a set of building blocks. In the first part of this section, we present models that focus on features:
exposure to malaria through the bites of infectious mosquitoes;
infection including superinfection and the complex time course of an infection, including models for the age or stage of infection;
disease including fever, anemia, and any severe disease caused by malaria;
treatment and chemo-protection including care seeking and adherance;
infectiousness to mosquitoes;
diagnostics & detection;
immunity and effect modification, including models with stage-structured immunity and exposure tracking variables;
malaria vaccines.
Age & Time
Next, we discuss the problem of handling age and time. In developing most models, we will treat them as models for cohorts of humans as they age.
PDG Malaria
For malaria analytics, the standard is fit for purpose. Lives are on the line, so we need models that are accurate enough to rely on. We don’t need the model to be perfect, but it ought to be – in words I learned as a farm hand – pretty damned good (PDG). For malaria analysts, we will restrict our study to models that can be built and solved in a reasonable amount of time, so we will largely steer clear of individual-based models. The last section describes some PDG malaria models.