title: Simulated epidemics in an empirical spatiotemporal network of 50,185 sexual contacts.
abstract: Sexual contact patterns, both in their temporal and network structure, can influence the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STI). Most previous literature has focused on effects of network topology; few studies have addressed the role of temporal structure. We simulate disease spread using SI and SIR models on an empirical temporal network of sexual contacts in high-end prostitution. We compare these results with several other approaches, including randomization of the data, classic mean-field approaches, and static network simulations. We observe that epidemic dynamics in this contact structure have well-defined, rather high epidemic thresholds. Temporal effects create a broad distribution of outbreak sizes, even if the per-contact transmission probability is taken to its hypothetical maximum of 100%. In general, we conclude that the temporal correlations of our network accelerate outbreaks, especially in the early phase of the epidemics, while the network topology (apart from the contact-rate distribution) slows them down. We find that the temporal correlations of sexual contacts can significantly change simulated outbreaks in a large empirical sexual network. Thus, temporal structures are needed alongside network topology to fully understand the spread of STIs. On a side note, our simulations further suggest that the specific type of commercial sex we investigate is not a reservoir of major importance for HIV.
authors: IceLab, Department of Physics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden. luis.rocha@tp.umu.se
authors: Luis E C
authors: LE
authors: Rocha
authors: Fredrik
authors: F
authors: Liljeros
authors: Petter
authors: P
authors: Holme
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil / Q000453:epidemiology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011477:Sex Work / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012747:Sexual Partners; D012749:Sexually Transmitted Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology*