Inoculum Dose and Infection Outcome

Annaliese Wiens, a student from Tabor College, worked with Dr. Andreas Handel to examine the relationship between inoculum dose and infection outcome.

Abstract:  Dose-response models describe how different inoculum doses of a pathogen alter the probability of infection with a host. It is generally assumed that higher amounts of inoculum increase infection rates, but the exact relationship has yet to be determined. We performed a meta-analysis of systematically-reviewed influenza challenge studies in which the exact inoculum dose and proportion of people infected were given. This data was used to fit several models, including an exponential model and an approximate Beta-Poisson model. These models were also stratified by different covariates, such as the strain of influenza and preparation of the virus. We used the exponential model to show that viruses prepared by different methods (wild-type, cold-adapted, etc.) have differing levels of infectivity, implying some loss of fitness during passaging through human or non-human cells.

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