West Nile Virus: An Annotated Example of an Adapted Primary Literature (APL) Article

Abstract

In this chapter we provide an example of an APL article annotated for epistemology and structure. The APL article originated from a Primary Scientific Literature (PSL) article (Wonham et al. 2004) and reports on the development of a mathematical model of the West Nile virus cross infection between birds and mosquitoes. The virus was first identified in the West Nile area of Uganda in the early first half of the twentieth century. It spread to parts of the Mediterranean and to Europe and turned up in North America in the late 1990s. People who get West Nile virus usually have been bitten by an infected mosquito, which typically has bitten an infected bird. The virus can lead to inflammation of the brain, which can be fatal. The key to fighting any disease is understanding its epidemiology, which often points to the most effective point of intervention. In order to prevent an epidemic of any infectious disease, attempts are made to keep the infection below some threshold in the infected populations. The APL article below reports the research of a group of mathematical biologists attempting to identify what that threshold might be for the West Nile virus, and when infected how to keep the infection below the epidemic threshold is most important.