Mathematical Biology Group - continued

The work of the group focuses on several internationally important diseases, including bluetongue, foot-and-mouth disease and scrapie. Some key questions which we are currently addressing include:

  • Bluetongue (BT): What is the risk of BT to UK livestock and how does this vary over space and time? What might be the pattern of spread of BT in the UK? How can BT be best controlled?
  • Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD): How does FMD spread within a farm? Why does FMD virus persist in some animals? What are the risks associated with different control policies? What are the dynamics of infection at the wildlife-livestock interface in endemic countries?
  • Scrapie: How much scrapie is there in the UK? How can scrapie be best controlled? Why do some farms get disease and not others?

Publications:

  • Gubbins, S. & McIntyre, K.M. (2009)Prevalence of sheep infected with classical scrapie in Great Britain, 1993-2007. Epidemiology and Infection 137, 787-791. [Abstract] 
  • Gubbins, S., Carpenter, S., Baylis, M., Wood, J.L.N. & Mellor, P.S. (2008) Assessing the risk of bluetongue to UK livestock: uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of a temperature-dependent model for the basic reproduction number. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 5, 363-371. [Abstract] (full text articles) 
  • McIntyre, K.M., del Rio Vilas, V.J. & Gubbins, S. (2008) No temporal trends in the prevalence of atypical scrapie in British sheep, 2002-2006. BMC Veterinary Research 4, 13. [Abstract] (full text articles) 
  • Schley, D., Burgin, L. & Gloster, J. (2009) Predicting infection risk of airborne foot-and-mouth disease. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 6, 455-462. [Abstract] 
  • Schley, D., Gubbins, S. & Paton, D.J. (2009) Quantifying the risk of localised animal movement bans for foot-and-mouth disease disease PLoS ONE 4, e5481 [Abstract] (full text articles)
  • Szmaragd, C., Wilson, A.J., Carpenter, S., Wood, J.L.N., Mellor, P.S. & Gubbins, S. (2009) A modeling framework to describe the transmission of bluetongue virus within and between farms in Great Britain. PLoS ONE 4, e7741 [Abstract] (full text articles)
  • Wilson, A., Darpel, K. & Mellor, P.S. (2008) Where does bluetongue sleep in the winter? PLoS Biology 6, e210. [Abstract] (full text articles)