Chemistry and Physics Faculty Articles

Title

A Model of Band-Pass Phenotypic Resistance in a Modified Beverton-Holt Framework

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2014

Publication Title

Mathematical Biosciences

Keywords

Antibiotic resistance, Beverton-Holt, Band-Pass

ISSN

0025-5564

Volume

252

First Page

7

Last Page

13

Abstract

A new mathematical model of phenotypic bacterial resistance to a periodically applied antibiotic is presented. Using a modified Beverton–Holt framework, and without appealing to any explicit internal timescale or heritable mutations, we map the parameter-space regions corresponding to bacterial colony survival or extinction. It is demonstrated that band-pass behavior, in which colony survival occurs at intermediate – but not short or long – antibiotic application periods, is a possible regime for some initial population values if the bactericidal activity is sufficient. However, below this threshold value of antibiotic efficacy, a “fixed-point catastrophe” occurs, and colony extinction does not occur when the bacteria are challenged with long application periods. These results suggest that the dosing schedule of antibiotics within a clinical setting merits additional scrutiny, since even seemingly unimportant modifications to the frequency of administration may lead to widely diverging patient outcomes.

Comments

©2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

DOI

10.1016/j.mbs.2014.03.003

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Peer Reviewed

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