Location of Pathogenic Bacteria during Persistent Infections: Insights from an Analysis Using Game Theory

Eswarappa, Sandeepa M (2009) Location of Pathogenic Bacteria during Persistent Infections: Insights from an Analysis Using Game Theory. In: PLoS ONE, 4 (4).

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Abstract

Bacterial persistent infections are responsible for a significant amount of the human morbidity and mortality. Unlike acute bacterial infections, it is very difficult to treat persistent bacterial infections (e.g. tuberculosis). Knowledge about the location of pathogenic bacteria during persistent infection will help to treat such conditions by designing novel drugs which can reach such locations. In this study, events of bacterial persistent infections were analyzed using game theory. A game was defined where the pathogen and the host are the two players with a conflict of interest. Criteria for the establishment of Nash equilibrium were calculated for this game. This theoretical model, which is very simple and heuristic, predicts that during persistent infections pathogenic bacteria stay in both intracellular and extracellular compartments of the host. The result of this study implies that a bacterium should be able to survive in both intracellular and extracellular compartments of the host in order to cause persistent infections. This explains why persistent infections are more often caused by intracellular pathogens like Mycobacterium and Salmonella. Moreover, this prediction is in consistence with the results of previous experimental studies.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	PLoS ONE
Publisher:	Public Library Science
Additional Information:	© 2009 Eswarappa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Microbiology & Cell Biology
Date Deposited:	19 Jan 2010 09:02
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 05:54
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/25420

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