Purpose: Population contact networks, such as sexual and drug injection networks, play an important role in the dynamics of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission. We built a complex network model that includes heterosexual, homosexual men, and drug injection networks to provide better understanding of the dynamics of HIV and HCV transmission. This network model facilitates the forecast of HIV and HCV epidemic growth, and thus enhances the accuracy of future cost-effectiveness analyses for HIV and HCV.
Method: By combining multi-agent systems and complex networks, we developed a complex agent network model that accommodates differential selectivity, behavior, and network properties to explain the HIV and HCV epidemic. In our model, agents represent individuals who can have interactions with other individuals. We simulated the entire Canadian population, stratified by age groups, sex, sexual orientation, and immigrant status. Each individual has his/her own injection and sexual behavior. Drug injection behavior was characterized by the injection frequency, and the rate of sharing injecting equipment. Sexual behavior was characterized by sexual activity rate, condom usage rate, the number of sexual partners, and the type of partnership (casual or regular). Heterosexual networks, homosexual men networks, and injection networks were created to describe the contact patterns between individual. We estimated parameters from literature-derived estimates of Canadian demographic, epidemiological, sexual and injection behavior data. Historical Canadian HIV and HCV data were used for validation.
Result: The simulated number of new HIV and HCV infections were compared with the historical reported cases in Canada. Our initial results showed a similar trend to the reported cases in Canada. In the next 10 years, our model projected that a total of 41,900 individuals would be newly infected with HIV, of whom 30.8% were infected through the heterosexual contact, 59.2% through homosexual contact, and 10.0% through sharing of injection drug paraphernalia. The model also projected that 85,300 individuals would be newly infected with HCV through the drug injection network in the next 10 years.
Conclusion: Our network model showed good calibration between historical Canadian HIV and HCV data and the simulation results. This complex network model reflects dynamics of HIV and HCV transmission, which enables forecasting of the epidemiology of HIV and HCV for policy-level decision making in Canada.
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