Population Control of Giardia lamblia

TL;DR

This paper develops a control model for Giardia lamblia population dynamics, incorporating mutation resistance, with the aim of extermination, and demonstrates its effectiveness through simulations and experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel control law for Giardia lamblia considering mutation resistance and uncertain parameters, with proven stability and practical validation.

Findings

Control law achieves effective Giardia extermination

Model accounts for mutation-driven resistance

Simulation and experiments confirm robustness

Abstract

Giardia lamblia is a flagellate intestinal protozoan with global distribution causing the disease known as giardiasis. This parasite is responsable for 35.1% of outbreaks of diarrhea caused by contaminated water which and mainly affects children in whom it can cause physical and cognitive impairment. In this paper, we consider a model of population dynamics to represent the behavior of Giardia lamblia in vitro, taking into account its mutation characteristic that guarantees to the protozoan resistance to the drug metronidazole. Different from what is found in the literature, it is pursued as the control objective the extermination of the protozoan considering that the parameters of the model are uncertain and only the partial measurement of the state vector is possible. On these assumptions, a control law is designed and the stability of the closed-loop system is rigorously proved. Simulation and experimental results illustrate the benefits of the proposed population control method of Giardia lamblia.