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Structural network characteristics affect epidemic severity and prediction in social contact networks.

ABSTRACT: Understanding and mitigating epidemic spread in complex networks requires the measurement of structural network properties associated with epidemic risk. Classic measures of epidemic thresholds like the basic reproduction number (R₀) have been adapted to account for the structure of social contact networks but still may be unable to capture epidemic potential relative to more recent measures based on spectral graph properties. Here, we explore the ability of R₀ and the spectral radius of the social contact network to estimate epidemic susceptibility. To do so, we simulate epidemics on a series of constructed (small world, scale-free, and random networks) and a collection of over 700 empirical biological social contact networks. Further, we explore how other network properties are related to these two epidemic estimators (R₀ and spectral radius) and mean infection prevalence in simulated epidemics. Overall, we find that network properties strongly influence epidemic dynamics and the subsequent utility of R₀ and spectral radius as indicators of epidemic risk.

SUBMITTER: McKee J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10824764 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Structural network characteristics affect epidemic severity and prediction in social contact networks.

McKee Jae J Dallas Tad T

Infectious Disease Modelling 20231228 1

Understanding and mitigating epidemic spread in complex networks requires the measurement of structural network properties associated with epidemic risk. Classic measures of epidemic thresholds like the basic reproduction number (R0) have been adapted to account for the structure of social contact networks but still may be unable to capture epidemic potential relative to more recent measures based on spectral graph properties. Here, we explore the ability of R0</sub ...[more]

PMID: 38293687

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Project description:Certain theories suggest that it should be difficult or impossible to eradicate a vaccine-preventable disease under voluntary vaccination: Herd immunity implies that the individual incentive to vaccinate disappears at high coverage levels. Historically, there have been examples of declining coverage for vaccines, such as MMR vaccine and whole-cell pertussis vaccine, that are consistent with this theory. On the other hand, smallpox was globally eradicated by 1980 despite voluntary vaccination policies in many jurisdictions. Previous modeling studies of the interplay between disease dynamics and individual vaccinating behavior have assumed that infection is transmitted in a homogeneously mixing population. By comparison, here we simulate transmission of a vaccine-preventable SEIR infection through a random, static contact network. Individuals choose whether to vaccinate based on infection risks from neighbors, and based on vaccine risks. When neighborhood size is small, rational vaccinating behavior results in rapid containment of the infection through voluntary ring vaccination. As neighborhood size increases (while the average force of infection is held constant), a threshold is reached beyond which the infection can break through partially vaccinated rings, percolating through the whole population and resulting in considerable epidemic final sizes and a large number vaccinated. The former outcome represents convergence between individually and socially optimal outcomes, whereas the latter represents their divergence, as observed in most models of individual vaccinating behavior that assume homogeneous mixing. Similar effects are observed in an extended model using smallpox-specific natural history and transmissibility assumptions. This work illustrates the significant qualitative differences between behavior-infection dynamics in discrete contact-structured populations versus continuous unstructured populations. This work also shows how disease eradicability in populations where voluntary vaccination is the primary control mechanism may depend partly on whether the disease is transmissible only to a few close social contacts or to a larger subset of the population.

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Dataset Information

Structural network characteristics affect epidemic severity and prediction in social contact networks.

Publications

Structural network characteristics affect epidemic severity and prediction in social contact networks.

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