Network for Biological Invasions and Dispersal Research

MITACS Seminar at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton

Tuesday, 24 March, 2009,

Hongbin Guo

of York University

will speak on

Modeling Hepatitis B virus infection in an epidemic country

3:30 PM, Tilley 404, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton

Abstract: Worldwide, 2 billion people infected with Hepatitis B virus (HBV), more than 350 million are chronic carriers of HBV and 600,000 die each year from HBV-related liver disease such as cirrhosis, liver failure, or hepatocellular carcinoma. HBV can be transmitted vertically, through sexual or household contact, or by unsafe injections, but chronic infections acquired during infancy or childhood account for a disproportionately large part of worldwide morbidity and mortality. Treatment for chronic carriers of HBV is not available at the moment. While vaccination against HBV infection is feasible and provides long-term protection against infection in more than 90% of healthy people starting at babies.

HBV infection is a serious national public health issue in China. After initiating a universal vaccination program for all babies less than one year old since 2002, the prevalence of HBV among adults has kept an endemic level of 6.97%. We develop a compartmental model of HBV with vertical transmission, horizontal transmission and comprehensive vaccination measures to investigate the transmission dynamics of disease in a high endemic setting. We analyze the global dynamics of the ODE system and carry out some numerical simulations based on realistic data from one province of China.

Joint work with Ke Men, Vahid Anvari and Jianhong Wu.