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Author Notes:

W. F. de Graaf w.f.degraaf@uu.nl

We thank R. Rudnicky and an anonymous referee for comments that led to substantial improvements.

Subject:

Keywords:

  • Warning of immunity
  • Boosting of immunity
  • Renewal equation
  • Stable distribution
  • Next-generation operator

Waning and boosting: on the dynamics of immune status

Tools:

Journal Title:

Journal of Mathematical Biology

Volume:

Volume 77, Number 6

Publisher:

, Pages 2023-2048

Type of Work:

Article | Final Publisher PDF

Abstract:

The aim is to describe the distribution of immune status (as captured by antibody level) on the basis of a within-host submodel for continuous waning and occasional boosting. Inspired by Feller’s fundamental work and the more recent delay equation formulation of models for the dynamics of physiologically structured populations, we derive, for given force of infection, a linear renewal equation. The solution is obtained by generation expansion, with the generation number corresponding to the number of times the individual became infected. Our main result provides a precise characterization of the stable distribution of immune status.

Copyright information:

© The Author(s) 2018

This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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