Promiscuity and the evolution of sexual transmitted diseases

S. GONCALVES; M. N. KUPERMAN; M. FERREIRA DA COSTA GOMES

PHYSICA A - STATISTICAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS

Año: 2003 vol. 327 p. 1 - 8

0378-4371

We study the relation between di-erent social behaviors and the onset ofepidemics in a modelfor the dynamics of sexual transmitted diseases. The model considers the society as a system ofindividual sexuated agents that can be organized in couples and interact with each other. Thedi-erent social behaviors are incorporated assigning what we call a promiscuity value to eachindividual agent. The individual promiscuity is taken from a distribution and represents the dailyprobability ofgoing out to look for a sexual partner, abandoning its eventual mate. In terms ofthis parameter we 3nd a threshold for the epidemic which is much lower than the classical SIRmodel prediction, i.e., R0 (basic reproductive number)=1. Different forms for the distributionofthe population promiscuity are considered showing that the threshold is weakly sensitive tothem. We study the homosexual and the heterosexual case as well.