HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Virology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1551320
This article is part of the Research TopicThe interaction of chronic viral infections and SARS-CoV-2 infection and its effect on the COVID-19 pathogenesisView all 10 articles
Mathematical modelling of the heterogeneity of disease progression and treatment outcomes in patients with COVID-19
Provisionally accepted
Guozhi Yu1,2*
Houhui Huang3*- 1Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, China
- 2Department of Bioengineering and Applied Biology, College of Life Science, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya an, Sichuan Province, China
- 3Department of Applied Mathematics, College of Science, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya an, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Pneumonia caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection is a self-limiting disease. Its progression and prognosis are highly heterogeneous among people of different ages, genders, and living with different life styles. Such heterogeneity also exists in treatment outcomes of different patients. Various physiological and pathological factors, such as renewal of pulmonary cell, number of entry receptor and viral replication, have been identified linking to the development of the disease. However, it is still unclear how these factors collectively establish a causal relationship in the course of disease progression. In this study, we built a mechanistic model to explain the dynamics of infection and progression of COVID-19. We modeled how the interaction of pulmonary cells determine the dynamics of disease progression by characterizing the temporal dynamics of viral load, infected and health alveolar cells, and dysfuctional alveolar cells. The viral and cellular dynamics captured different stages of clinical manifestations in individual patient during disease progression: the incubation period, mild symptom period, and severe period. We further simulated clinical interference at different stages of disease progression. The results showed that some medical interventions show no improvement either in reducing the recovery rate or shortening the recovery time. Our theoretical framework may provide a mechanistic explanation at the systems level for the progression and prognosis of COVID-19 as well as other similar respiratory tract diseases.
Keywords: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, infection heterogeneity, disease progression, mechanistic model, Clinical intervention
Received: 25 Dec 2024; Accepted: 08 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yu and Huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Guozhi Yu, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, China
Houhui Huang, Department of Applied Mathematics, College of Science, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya an, 625014, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.