TY - JOUR
T1 - Multiobjective Optimization Applied to the Eradication of Persistent Pathogens
AU - Steuernagel, O.
AU - Polani, D.
N1 - “This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.”
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - In scenarios such as therapeutic modeling or pest control, one aims to suppress infective agents or maximize crop yields while minimizing the side-effects of interventions, such as cost, environmental impact, and toxicity. Here, we consider the eradication of persistent microbes (e.g., Escherichia coli, multiply resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA-“superbug”), Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa) through medication. Such microbe populations consist of metabolically active and metabolically inactive (persistent) subpopulations. It turns out that, for efficient medication strategies, the two goals, eradication of active bacteria on one hand and eradication of inactive bacteria on the other, are in conflict. Using multiobjective optimization, we obtain a survey of the full spectrum of best solutions. We find that, if treatment time is limited and the total medication dose is constant, the application of the medication should be concentrated both at the beginning and end of the treatment. If the treatment time is increased, the medication should become increasingly spread out over the treatment period until it is uniformly spread over the entire period. The transition between short and long overall treatment times sees optimal medication strategies clustered into groups.
AB - In scenarios such as therapeutic modeling or pest control, one aims to suppress infective agents or maximize crop yields while minimizing the side-effects of interventions, such as cost, environmental impact, and toxicity. Here, we consider the eradication of persistent microbes (e.g., Escherichia coli, multiply resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA-“superbug”), Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa) through medication. Such microbe populations consist of metabolically active and metabolically inactive (persistent) subpopulations. It turns out that, for efficient medication strategies, the two goals, eradication of active bacteria on one hand and eradication of inactive bacteria on the other, are in conflict. Using multiobjective optimization, we obtain a survey of the full spectrum of best solutions. We find that, if treatment time is limited and the total medication dose is constant, the application of the medication should be concentrated both at the beginning and end of the treatment. If the treatment time is increased, the medication should become increasingly spread out over the treatment period until it is uniformly spread over the entire period. The transition between short and long overall treatment times sees optimal medication strategies clustered into groups.
U2 - 10.1109/TEVC.2010.2040181
DO - 10.1109/TEVC.2010.2040181
M3 - Article
SN - 1089-778X
VL - 14
SP - 759
EP - 765
JO - IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
JF - IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
IS - 5
ER -