چکیده (انگلیسی):

It is well known that highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses emerge through mutation of pre-cursor low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) viruses in domestic poultry populations. The potential forimmunological cross-protection between these pathogenic variants is recognised but the epidemiologi-cal impact during co-circulation is not well understood. Here we use mathematical models to investigatewhether altered flock infection parameters consequent to primary LPAI infections can impact on thespread of HPAI at the population level. First we used mechanistic models reflecting the co-circulatorydynamics of LPAI and HPAI within a single commercial poultry flock. We found that primary infectionswith LPAI led to HPAI prevalence being maximised under a scenario of high but partial cross-protection.We then tested the population impact in spatially-explicit simulations motivated by a major avianinfluenza A(H7N1) epidemic that afflicted the Italian poultry industry in 1999–2001. We found thatpartial cross-protection can lead to a prolongation of HPAI epidemic duration. Our findings have impli-cations for the control of HPAI in poultry particularly for settings in which LPAI and HPAI frequentlyco-circulate.© 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).