{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,30]],"date-time":"2026-09-30T06:01:08Z","timestamp":1790748068251,"version":"4.1.0"},"reference-count":45,"publisher":"The Royal Society","issue":"242","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,30]],"date-time":"2026-09-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1790726400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) PhD studentship","award":["EP\/W524414\/1"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["EP\/W524414\/1"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0439y7842","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"name":"JUNIPER partnership","award":["MR\/X018598\/1"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["MR\/X018598\/1"]}]},{"name":"NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Behavioural Science and Evaluation at the University of Bristol"},{"name":"National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Focus Award in Immunisation at the University of Bristol","id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0187kwz08","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"name":"UK Research and Innovation AI programme of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, AI for Collective Intelligence Research Hub","award":["EP\/Y028392\/1"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["EP\/Y028392\/1"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0439y7842","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"name":"Wellcome Trust Early Career Award","award":["227041\/Z\/23\/Z"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["227041\/Z\/23\/Z"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/029chgv08","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"crossref"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,30]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:p>Protecting populations against pathogens that induce non-sterilizing immunity remains a major public health challenge. However, conventional mathematical models are often incompatible with within-host data, offering limited insight into how immune responses drive epidemics. To address this gap, we develop a modular, data-driven mathematical framework that links immunological and virological dynamics to population-level transmission. Our approach derives infectiousness from viral load and protection against reinfection from time-varying immune responses, allowing epidemic trajectories to emerge from the summation of individual-level processes. As an example, we use viral load quantified in a SARS-CoV-2 human challenge study and binding antibody levels post-vaccination against SARS-CoV-2. The framework captures individual-level infection dynamics and shows that immune responses fundamentally shape epidemic trajectories. We show that weak correlations between antibody levels and protection lead to frequent reinfections and endemic circulation, whereas strong correlations generate recurrent explosive outbreaks. We fit the model to simulated case data to demonstrate its ability to recover underlying protection and reinfection dynamics. Applied to real-world data, this framework could provide new insights into the drivers of epidemic patterns and inform vaccination strategies for pathogens with non-sterilizing immunity.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1098\/rsif.2026.0230","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,30]],"date-time":"2026-09-30T05:39:16Z","timestamp":1790746756000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["An immunity-driven modelling framework for epidemics of non-sterilizing infections"],"prefix":"10.1098","volume":"23","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9877-620X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Daniel","family":"Stocks","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology, University of Bristol 1 , Bristol, UK"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Amy","family":"Thomas","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol 2 , Bristol, UK"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5984-4932","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ellen","family":"Brooks-Pollock","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol 2 , Bristol, UK"},{"name":"Jean Golding Institute, University of Bristol 3 , Bristol, UK"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7076-1871","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Leon","family":"Danon","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology, University of Bristol 1 , Bristol, UK"},{"name":"Jean Golding Institute, University of Bristol 3 , Bristol, UK"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"175","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026093001391314900_RSIF20260230C1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1201\/9781315533247","volume-title":"Janeway's immunobiology","author":"Murphy","year":"2016"},{"key":"2026093001391314900_RSIF20260230C2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"61","DOI":"10.1007\/s00285-021-01681-4","article-title":"The impact of infection-derived immunity on disease dynamics","volume":"83","author":"Le","year":"2021","journal-title":"J. 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