The former are mostly ODE-based models that use classes like susceptibles, recovered, infectives, latently infected, etc. to describe the evolution of an epidemic in a population. Some of them also use structure variables, such as size or age. The latter describe the evolution of the immune system/pathogen in the infected host—usually resulting in death,nrecovery or chronic infection. There is valuable insight to be gained from combining these two types of models, as that may lead to a better understanding of the severity of an epidemic. In this presentation we describe a new type of model that combines the two by using variables of immunological nature as structure variables for epidemiological models.
We then describe a practical application of the model to HIV infection, based on combinations of skills from biostatisticians, medical immunologists, mathematicians and others.