Abstract
Introduction: Bladder infections are common, affecting millions each year, and are often recurrent problems.
Methods: We have developed a spatial mathematical framework consisting of a hybrid individual-based model to simulate these infections in order to understand more about the bacterial mechanisms and immune dynamics. We integrate a varying bacterial replication rate and model bacterial shedding as an immune mechanism.
Results: We investigate the effect that varying the initial bacterial load has on infection outcome, where we find that higher bacterial burden leads to poorer outcomes, but also find that only a single bacterium is needed to establish infection in some cases. We also simulate an immunocompromised environment, confirming the intuitive result that bacterial spread typically progresses at a higher rate.
Conclusions: With future model developments, this framework is capable of providing new clinical insight into bladder infections.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1090334 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics |
| Volume | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 3 Feb 2023 |
Data Availability Statement
The original contributions presented in the study are publiclyavailable. This data can be found at: https://github.com/RuthBowness-Group/UTImodel, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7293870.
Keywords
- Escherichia coli
- bladder
- individual-based
- infection
- mathematical
- model
- simulation
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Applied Mathematics
- Statistics and Probability