Evolution of airborne infectious diseases according to changes in characteristics of the host population

Abstract

Abstract The authors predicted evolutionary changes in airborne infectious diseases according to changes in the characteristics of the host population. The predictions were based upon a mathematical model of infectious diseases and the validity of the predictions was verified against the history of man and pathogens. The feature of this model is that it involves a density of pathogens in the environment as an additional variable which can be regarded as more suitable to airborne infectious diseases. In spite of this modification, this study reached a similar conclusion to the threshold density theory: that is, susceptible host density in the absence of the pathogen must be larger than that in the presence of the pathogen, for the pathogen to be persistent. Moreover the authors concluded that one type of pathogen cannot be replaced by another type of pathogen as long as the susceptible host density of the former type is the mininum one. The predictions were considered to be valid for a wide range of infectous diseases. Making use of these principles, the authors predicted that the variety of infectious diseases should increase as host density increases and that pathogens should evolve to be less virulent as the host life‐span increases. The finalidea discussed is whether or nor the history of man and pathogen can be verified by the predictions.