Delayed action insecticides and their role in mosquito and malaria control (Q2436601)

Consider two types of insecticides: conventional and LLA (late-life-acting), and two trains of mosquitoes: resistant (to an insecticide) and vulnerable (to an insecticide). Denote by \(S_h(t), E_h(t), I_h(t)\) the numbers of susceptible, exposed and infectious humans, respectively, at time \(t\), and the total number of humans is then \(T_h(t)=S_h(t)+E_h(t)+I_h(t)\). Assume that there is no age structure in the human population. For the conventional insecticide case, the authors only consider the adult mosquitoes (defined as \(a\geq \tau_i\)) which will be denoted as \(S_r(t), E_r(t), I_r(t)\) for the resistant strain and \(S_v(t), E_v(t), I_v(t)\) for the vulnerable strain, where \(a\) is the age of the mosquitoes, and \(\tau_i>0\) is the time taking from egg to maturation. The differential system found for the conventional insecticide case has 9 equations. For the LLA insecticide case, they consider the adult mosquitoes (defined as \(a\in[ \tau_i,\tau_i+\tau_a]\), denoted as \(S_{ra}(t), E_{ra}(t), I_{ra}(t)\) for the resistant strain and \(S_{va}(t), E_{va}(t), I_{va}(t)\) for the vulnerable strain) and old mosquitoes (defined as \(a>\tau_i+\tau_a\), denoted as \(S_{ro}(t), E_{ro}(t), I_{ro}(t)\) for the resistant strain and \(S_{vo}(t), E_{vo}(t), I_{vo}(t)\) for the vulnerable strain), where \(\tau_a\) is the time duration from the adult phase prior to reaching old age. The differential system found for the LLA insecticide case has 15 equations. Of course, all the parameters, such as natural death rate, biting rate et al., have to be assumed constants (independent on age) in the model derivation for simplicity. The parasite developmental times for the malarial plasmodium are incorporated into both models. From the biological aspect, the derivation of the models in this article is based on the consideration of malaria disease dynamics and the management of insecticide resistance in mosquitoes. In the second model, the authors assume that the malaria disease can be spread only by the old mosquitoes, and thereby the LLA insecticide is developed to kill the old mosquitoes that transmit malaria. This consideration could slow down the insecticide resistance and reduce selection pressure favoring resistance. The asymptotic stability of the malaria-free equilibrium for both models is studied by the linearised method. The biological significance for the dependence of this stability on the parameters is discussed. Also some basic reproduction numbers are calculated and numerical simulations are done.