5. Discussion and conclusions

The use of Wolbachia bacterium has been proposed as a new innovative strategy against dengue. A lot of research have been conducted to look at the persistence of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes and the potential reduction in the number of dengue cases by the use of Wolbachia bacterium. One of the approaches is by the use of mathematical model. It can be seen that mathematical model can provide insights into the persistence and the effectiveness of the Wolbachia in reducing dengue transmission dynamics.

One of the important steps in modelling is model's validation. The model can be validated against the real data. Although several parameters can be obtained from literature, it is important to estimate the influential parameters such as transmission rate against the real data. Ferguson et al. [37] validated their model against the real data. Furthermore, most parameters are strongly uncertain, which indicate that sensitivity analysis is strongly required. This aims to find the most important parameters which can guide us in collecting appropriate data to be estimated.

Models presented in this work do not take into account the environmental factors such as temperature and rainfall. These may affect the dynamics of mosquito population and hence dengue transmission dynamics. Furthermore, in our work, the ratio of male and female mosquitoes is equal, which possibly affects the mosquito's population dynamics. It is important to consider sex-biased ratio to determine its effects on the persistence of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes and dengue reduction.

In this paper, we review existing mathematical models of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes' population dynamics and dengue with Wolbachia. Examples of the mathematical models are given. It shows that Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes can persist in the population depending on the Wolbachia strains. Furthermore, the initial conditions also affect the persistence of Wolbachiacarrying mosquito populations. It is shown that Wolbachia can potentially reduce the primary and secondary infections with higher reduction in secondary infections. Results suggest that using Wolbachia can potentially reduce the transmission of dengue and hence minimise the public health and economic burden.

The results showed that the Wolbachia can persist in the population. When mosquitoes are infected with the WMel strain of Wolbachia. For dengue mathematical models with Wolbachia, it shows that the Wolbachia can potentially reduce the primary and secondary infections. This means that using Wolbachia can be an alternative strategy against dengue.
