英国格拉斯哥大学Katie Hampson课题组利用对狂犬病的研究，阐明了传播规模如何维持急性感染以低流行率持续存在。2022年4月29日出版的《科学》杂志发表了这项成果。

研究人员追踪了2002年至2016年坦桑尼亚50,000只狗的狂犬病传播情况，并将基于个体的模型应用于这些空间分辨数据，以探究调控传播的机制及其运作的规模。尽管狂犬病的患病率从未超过0.15%，但最佳拟合模型表明，由于大规模死亡和存在已经潜伏感染的狗，在局部范围内发生的易感动物明显减少。狂犬病在不同犬的个体差异促进了病毒的传播和病毒谱系的共同循环，从而使病毒元种群得以持续存在。这些机制对预测和控制空间结构中病原体在种群中的传播具有重要意义。

据了解，在没有获得性免疫的情况下，急性病原体如何持续存在以及如何限制其流行性增长仍亟待阐明。犬狂犬病是一种致命性人畜共患病，并以低流行率在低收入和中等收入国家的家犬中存在。

附：英文原文

Title: Rabies shows how scale of transmission can enable acute infections to persist at low prevalence

Author: Rebecca Mancy, Malavika Rajeev, Ahmed Lugelo, Kirstyn Brunker, Sarah Cleaveland, Elaine A. Ferguson, Karen Hotopp, Rudovick Kazwala, Matthias Magoto, Kristyna Rysava, Daniel T. Haydon, Katie Hampson

Issue&Volume: 2022-04-29

Abstract: How acute pathogens persist and what curtails their epidemic growth in the absence of acquired immunity remains unknown. Canine rabies is a fatal zoonosis that circulates endemically at low prevalence among domestic dogs in low- and middle-income countries. We traced rabies transmission in a population of 50,000 dogs in Tanzania from 2002 to 2016 and applied individual-based models to these spatially resolved data to investigate the mechanisms modulating transmission and the scale over which they operate. Although rabies prevalence never exceeded 0.15%, the best-fitting models demonstrated appreciable depletion of susceptible animals that occurred at local scales because of clusters of deaths and dogs already incubating infection. Individual variation in rabid dog behavior facilitated virus dispersal and cocirculation of virus lineages, enabling metapopulation persistence. These mechanisms have important implications for prediction and control of pathogens that circulate in spatially structured populations.

DOI: abn0713

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn0713