Colton Smith, Dixie State University
Dengue fever is one of the most common mosquito borne viral infections in the world; its spread is most prominent in tropical climates. The infection is caused by bites from mosquitoes carrying the virus. Recently, biologists have discovered that if you infect mosquitoes with bacteria called Wolbachia (a process called transinfection), and release them into the wild, they will spread this bacteria to the local mosquito population. Wolbachia bacteria causes an inhibited ability for the mosquitoes to transmit the Dengue virus, as well as a decreased mosquito lifespan. Several studies have shown that the Wolbachia bacteria can be used as a control method to mitigate the severity of Dengue fever outbreaks. We developed a mathematical model using a system of nonlinear differential equations to investigate how Wolbachia transinfections could diminish the spread of the Dengue virus in human populations. We then used MATLAB computational software to solve our model numerically, so we could simulate the spread of Dengue fever with a wide variety of environmental and human factors. With this information, we can determine how quickly and how far the Dengue virus can spread under variable factors such as environmental temperature, size of mosquito population, (both local and Wolbachia carrying), what time of year the Wolbachia mosquitoes are released and human population size. The numerical results of our model show that use of the Wolbachia bacteria can significantly reduce the severity of Dengue fever outbreaks, and that the environment temperature can play a large role in mitigating the outbreak. Our model can be used by mosquito abatement centers, and adjusted for local factors to determine optimal strategies to control disease outbreaks most efficiently.