Dynamical analysis of a sex-structured Chlamydia trachomatis transmission model with time delay (Q619709)

This paper designs a deterministic two-sex model for Chlamydia transmission dynamics in a population, where a delay is incorporated in modeling the latency period of Chlamydia trachomatis infection. The resulting delay differential equation model undergoes the phenomenon of backward bifurcation when the associated reproduction threshold is less than unity and the Chlamydia will persist in the population whenever the associated reproduction threshold exceeds unity. It is further shown that an increase of the length of the latency period of Chlamydia disease will have a positive or negative population-level impact, depending on the sign of a certain epidemiological threshold. This study shows that adding a time delay to the corresponding non-delayed Chlamydia transmission model does not alter the main qualitative (equilibrium) dynamics (with respect to the elimination or persistence of the disease in the population) of the non-delayed model.