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. 2011 Mar 1;43(1):9.
doi: 10.1186/1297-9686-43-9.

Effectiveness analysis of resistance and tolerance to infection

Johann C Detilleux  1
Affiliations

Effectiveness analysis of resistance and tolerance to infection

Johann C Detilleux. Genet Sel Evol. .

Abstract

Background: Tolerance and resistance provide animals with two distinct strategies to fight infectious pathogens and may exhibit different evolutionary dynamics. However, few studies have investigated these mechanisms in the case of animal diseases under commercial constraints.

Methods: The paper proposes a method to simultaneously describe (1) the dynamics of transmission of a contagious pathogen between animals, (2) the growth and death of the pathogen within infected hosts and (3) the effects on their performances. The effectiveness of increasing individual levels of tolerance and resistance is evaluated by the number of infected animals and the performance at the population level.

Results: The model is applied to a particular set of parameters and different combinations of values. Given these imputed values, it is shown that higher levels of individual tolerance should be more effective than increased levels of resistance in commercial populations. As a practical example, a method is proposed to measure levels of animal tolerance to bovine mastitis.

Conclusions: The model provides a general framework and some tools to maximize health and performances of a population under infection. Limits and assumptions of the model are clearly identified so it can be improved for different epidemiological settings.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic representation of the impact of resource allocation on performance (P) and number of pathogens (C).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Number of pathogens across time for 10 completely susceptible hosts.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Within-host dynamics for the number of pathogens and performances of four individuals with different levels of resistance (ρ) and tolerance (λ) Associated costs are in parentheses.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Number of infected individuals (solid line) and overall performance (broken line) in populations with different average values for levels of resistance (ρ) and tolerance (λ), and for their associated costs (cρ and cλ in parentheses) The values are expressed as percentages of their maxima.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Incremental effectiveness for performance (ΔEP) and number of infected individuals (ΔEI) for different investments in resistance (ρ) and tolerance (λ) and for various characteristics of the infection (Table 1) .
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