Malaria's Missing Number: Calculating the Human Component of R0 by a Within-Host Mechanistic Model of Plasmodium falciparum Infection and Transmission
Figure 5
Mechanistic model predicted human infectivity over time and within a population.
We calculated daily human infectivity to mosquitoes, as a function of time post emergence, for 1,000 simulated individuals. (A) Asexual parasitemias from 1,000 model runs. The wide diversity of host-parasite dynamics was fitted to malaria therapy data. (B) The mean daily infectivity of 1,000 simulated individuals for the first 300 days post emergence is shown as the red curve, and the area between the 25th and 75th daily infectivity percentiles is shown in blue. (C) Net infectivity for each of 1,000 individuals. The distribution of net human infectivity is represented as a violin plot, which extends to the maximum infectivity. The red cross illustrates the arithmetic mean infectiousness, and the green box shows median infectiousness.