The spread of diseases as a complex network

Diseases are illnesses, usually caused by biological components, that

affects animals and plants, humans included. Plagues, as far as we know, have
always affected humanity. Spreading though a vastly numbers of vectors, such as
air, water and blood, it is societys interest to avoid or stop them. Particularly,
infectious diseases usually turn the victim into a new vector, creating a network of
infected people and, therefore, a network of non-infected people or potentiallyinfected people. We may, of course, represent these networks with the graphs
theory.
We can think about the virus of the flu. This very known disease turn the
victim into a new vector, since the virus replicate itself and the disease make the
person to cough and sneeze, releasing droplets in the air that can infect other ones.
Its clearly, a complex network. Modelling, the nodes are the persons and the edges
are his proximity with another person. Scientists believe that people with the flu may
infect other people within 6 feet away. If someone stayed within this 6 feet for a
certain period of time, then we may connect both of them with an edge. Its not
guaranteed that every single person will be infected, but there is a possibility. If we
think about a weighted graph, the shortest the distances and the longest the time
spent near the vector, more weight is given to that edge.
Another example is the Black Plague that killed a third to a half of the
european population. Thats because scientists believe that the plague started in
china and spread by rats though trade routes to the Middle-East and Europe. From
Burma to China, to Mongolia, Persia, Turkey and the Caucasus, to Russia, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia and Italy, to Mediterranean Africa, Germany, France, Spain, England,
to the Nordic States. This case is even more interesting because we may model
using the cities, ports or trading posts as nodes, and trade routes as edges. We
dont track vector by vector but the geographic movement. Due to the bad hygiene
conditions, the plague spread easily in cities. Picturing a weighted graph, we can
use the trade activity or the numbers of trade routes as the weight, particularly the
sea trade routes.
But all these kinds of representations is used to track the spread of a
disease, we may use the graph theory to track its origins. For example, the HIV
virus. The RNA of HIV is not single, this virus suffered mutations in the past but kept
its effects. Scientists believe that the virus came from some specie of west african
monkey (whose also suffer from HIV) and suffered a mutation that make it able to
infect humans due to the practice of butchering and eating monkey meat. Therefore,
were capable to track how the disease spread by mapping the genetic mutations.
We may analyse the earliest known HIV genetic sample to compare with
the HIV that infects monkeys and the HIVs existent now, correlating it with the spot

that the sample was found. And, of couse, we can represent it with a graph. It can
be considered a complex networks because the same mutation may happen in
different locations, apparently not correlated. It was done and thats why we know
that AIDS came from West Africa.
One more way to model the graphs is thinking about the way of
transmission. For example, the recent Ebola plague could be transmitted though
saliva, sexual intercourse, blood, contact to contaminated corpses, and some other
ways. Considering the nodes as people and the edges as the ways of
transmissions, we can perhaps define the most common way of transmission in a
certain condition and how the surrounding people are threatened. Therefore,
develop techniques to avoid or to slow down the spread.
These are a few applications of the simple graph theory in the biology
field. We could explore other fields like genetic evolution, food chains, and other
biological complex networks or even other fields beyond these.
Sources (accessed on 12th June 2016):
http://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/origin
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/spread.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/plague/history/
http://chssp.ucdavis.edu/programs/historyblueprint/maps/medievalmap#blackdeathanch