Abstract

In this paper we develop an SIRS compartmental model to investigate the dynamic interplay between pesticide intoxication and the spread of infectious-contagious respiratory diseases. We are particularly interested in investigating three levels of genetic susceptibility to pesticide intoxication. The genotypic distribution of susceptibility to pesticide intoxication, is proposed and parameterized according to ethnic variation using real population data from published studies, and we assume that pesticide intoxication increases susceptibility to infection with a respiratory pathogen. We use mathematical models to illustrate the impact of this distribution on the spread of hypothetical respiratory disease in a population exposed to the organophosphate pesticide. In this context, we show how an initial basic reproductive number below the epidemic threshold of 1.0 could be enhanced to support epidemic outbreaks in agricultural populations that employ chlorpyrifos pesticides. We further illustrate our modeling framework to study the effect of ethnic group variation in Singapore (Malay, Indian and Chinese) using genetic distribution data from published studies. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.