The Social Behavior and the Evolution of Sexually Transmitted Diseases

S. GONCALVES; M. N. KUPERMAN

PHYSICA A - STATISTICAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS

Año: 2003 vol. 328 p. 225 - 232

0378-4371

We introduce a model for the evolution of sexually transmitted diseases, in which the socialbehavior is incorporated as a determinant factor for the further propagation of the infection. Thesystem may be regarded as a society of agents where in principle, anyone can sexually interactwith any other one in the population, indeed, in this contribution only the homosexual case isanalyzed. Different social behaviors are reflected in a distribution of sexual attitudes ranging fromthe more conservative to the more promiscuous. This is measured by what we call the promiscuity parameter. In terms of this parameter, we find a critical behavior for the evolution of the disease. There is a threshold below which the epidemic does not occur. We relate this critical value of promiscuity to what epidemiologists call the basic reproductive number, connecting it with the other parameters of the model, namely the infectivity and the infective period in a quantitative way. We consider the possibility of subjects to be grouped in couples.