Disease modeling

In 2008, Reuben Granich and his colleagues at the World Health Organization published a paper in the medical journal The Lancet that proposed a new strategy for combating HIV in South Africa, a country staggered by the virus, with as much as 18 percent of the population estimated to be infected. Based on a mathematical model, the study suggested a "test-and-treat" strategy. This would involve, among other steps, testing the entire population of South Africa for HIV and immediately beginning anti-retroviral therapy for all who tested positive. The current standard of care calls for waiting until symptoms appear after diagnosis.

New research based on a novel mathematical model predicts that a wave of drug-resistant HIV strains will emerge in San Francisco within the next five years. These strains could prove disastrous by hindering control of the HIV pandemic. In a study published Jan. 14 on the website of the journal Science, researchers from the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the University of California, San Francisco's HIV AIDS Program at San Francisco General Hospital, developed a complex network model that tracks the transmission of multiple strains of HIV.

Dr. Bradley G. Wagner and Dr. Sally Blower assessed the likelihood  that HIV could be eliminated within a decade using a universal "test and treat" strategy. Download PDF here.

The San Francisco Chronicle and TIME Magazine reported Jan. 14 on research by Sally Blower, director of the Center for Biomedical Modeling and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute, suggesting that the city could face an increase in drug-resistant HIV strains.

HealthDay News reported Jan. 14 on a study by Sally Blower, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and director of the UCLA Center for Biomedical Modeling, and colleagues showing that new drug-resistant strains of HIV could emerge in San Francisco over the next five years that would threaten efforts to control the pandemic. Blower was quoted.

The Toronto Globe and Asian News International respectively reported Jan. 7 and Jan. 8 on research by Sally Blower, director of the Center for Biomedical Modeling at the Semel Institute. Her lab used mathematical modeling to show that more H1N1 infections could occur during air travel if an infected person flies economy versus first class. A dozen TV newscasts also aired the findings Jan.

Viruses love plane travel. They get to fly around the world inside a closed container while their infected carrier breathes and coughs, spreading pathogens to other passengers, either by direct contact or through the air. And once people deplane, the virus can spread to other geographical areas.   Scientists already know that smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, seasonal influenza and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) can be transmitted during commercial flights.  Now, in the first study to predict the number of H1N1 flu infections that could occur during a flight, UCLA researchers found that transmission during transatlantic travel could be fairly high.