Mathematical modelling of bacterial resistance to multiple antibiotics and immune system response.

Bahatdin Daşbaşı,İlhan Öztürk

doi:10.1186/s40064-016-2017-8

Bahatdin Daşbaşı, İlhan Öztürk

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2017-8

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Journal: SpringerPlus	Publication Date: Apr 5, 2016
Citations: 23	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Sivas Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi, Erciyes University

Abstract

Resistance of developed bacteria to antibiotic treatment is a very important issue, because introduction of any new antibiotic is after a little while followed by the formation of resistant bacterial isolates in the clinic. The significant increase in clinical resistance to antibiotics is a troubling situation especially in nosocomial infections, where already defenseless patients can be unsuccessful to respond to treatment, causing even greater health issue. Nosocomial infections can be identified as those happening within 2 days of hospital acceptance, 3 days of discharge or 1 month of an operation. They influence 1 out of 10 patients admitted to hospital. Annually, this outcomes in 5000 deaths only in UK with a cost to the National Health Service of a billion pounds. Despite these problems, antibiotic therapy is still the most common method used to treat bacterial infections. On the other hand, it is often mentioned that immune system plays a major role in the progress of infections. In this context, we proposed a mathematical model defining population dynamics of both the specific immune cells produced according to the properties of bacteria by host and the bacteria exposed to multiple antibiotics synchronically, presuming that resistance is gained through mutations due to exposure to antibiotic. Qualitative analysis found out infection-free equilibrium point and other equilibrium points where resistant bacteria and immune system cells exist, only resistant bacteria exists and sensitive bacteria, resistant bacteria and immune system cells exist. As a result of this analysis, our model highlights the fact that when an individual’s immune system weakens, he/she suffers more from the bacterial infections which are believed to have been confined or terminated. Also, these results was supported by numerical simulations.

Highlights

Infections have been the leading cause of most diseases in the history of mankind (Mondragón et al 2014)
In this paper, we formulated a mathematical model of bacterial resistance to immune system response and multiple antibiotics simultaneously, considering specific changes in bacterial DNA sequence as the only mechanism of bacterial resistance acquisition in order to evaluate the effectiveness of antibiotic treatments with respect to the mechanism above
The parameter A is interpreted as the number of bacteria produced by the fraction of sensitive bacteria that survive to the effects due to antibiotics and immune cells

Summary

Introduction

Infections have been the leading cause of most diseases in the history of mankind (Mondragón et al 2014). The most common procedure known to fight bacterial infection is through antibiotic therapy applied to individuals. The release of each new class of antibiotics for treatment, shortly after, has been followed by the emergence of new strains of bacteria which are resistant to this class (Butler and Buss 2006; Clatworthy et al 2007; Lewis 2013). In this respect, developing new treatment strategies for bacterial infections is very important (Mondragón et al 2014)

Objectives

Conclusion