Coupling Within-Host and Between-Host Infectious Diseases Models

Abstract

Biological processes occur at distinct but interlinked scalesof organization. Yet, mathematical models are often focused on a single scale. Recently, there has been a significant interest in creating and using models that link the within-host dynamics and population level dynamics of infectious diseases. These types of multi-scale models, called immuno-epidemiological models, fall in four categories, dependent on the type of the epidemiological component of the model: network or IBM models, "nested'' age-since-infection structured models, ODE models, and"size-structured'' models. Immuno-epidemiological multi-scale models have been used to address a variety of questions, including what is the impact of within-host dynamics on population-level quantities such as reproduction number and prevalence, as well as questions related to evolution of the pathogen or co-evolution of theВ pathogen and the host. Here we review the literature onimmuno-epidemiological modeling as well as the main insights these models have created.