Why a Mathematical Model?
Mathematical models can be useful tools in exploring disease trends and health consequences of interventions in a population over time. In the case of cervical cancer, in which the time from acquisition of HPV infection to development of invasive cancer can be two decades or more, models can be used to translate short-term findings from vaccine trials into predictions of long-term health outcomes [3–9]. In a new study in PLoS Medicine, Barnabas and colleagues present a particular type of mathematical model known as a dynamic model to directly assess the effect of sexual transmission of HPV type 16 in a Finnish population [10]. This model is the first to capitalize on empirical data on sexual history and HPV seroprevalence from a single population to estimate the transmission of HPV 16 between men and women, and to explore the impacts of risk factors on observed changes in cervical cancer incidence over time.
