From HIV and hepatitis C to Zika, Ebola, and mpox viruses, the list of pathogens that can be transmitted in more than one way is growing rapidly. In a Focus article recently published in Science Advances, SFI External Professor Samuel Scarpino (Northeastern University) explains why new modeling techniques are needed to capture the dynamics of multiroute pathogens, since they behave far differently than single-route pathogens.
In the overview, Scarpino highlights another paper in the same issue that develops a multiroute transmission model to study the spread of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When mpox started to affect children more often than adults in the DRC, some researchers thought the virus had changed evolutionarily. But more recently, others proposed a different possibility: that mpox’s multiple simultaneous transmission routes could alone account for these shifting patterns.
In the near future, Scarpino argues, infectious-disease epidemiologists will need to consider multiple transmission routes when studying pathogens. Current mathematical and computational tools have begun to more fully embrace epidemics as complex systems, but to truly advance epidemiology, scientists must continue to challenge current models with real-world data and cooperate both internationally and across disciplines.
Read the Focus article “Multiroute pathogen transmission is different” in Science Advances (April 1, 2026). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aeg9143