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Introduction

Tuberculosis is an airborne infectious disease caused by the mycobacterium tuberculosis. It can aect many organs, but
the most usual symptoms are found in the lungs, about 75% of the tuberculosis cases are pulmonary tuberculosis. Some of
these symptoms are tissue destruction, chronic cough and fever.
Although since the rst treatments for tuberculosis were developed the number of cases had been decreasing, especially in
developed countries, it is still an important disease. Tuberculosis is the second cause of death from infectious diseases. It
is estimated that about one third of world's population has been infected, with 9 million new infections every year. About
1,3-1,5 million people dies annually because of the disease.
There are some risk factors that complicate the eradication of tuberculosis, to name two: HIV infection, the immunodeciency caused by HIV can be a very important risk factor for tuberculosis, and it is found that the two diseases are
often present at the same time. Another diculty is the appearance of drug-resistant strains of the tuberculosis bacterium.
Multiple drug- resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) can be caused by sick individuals, that abandon the treatment after its
initial phase. Since the bacterium is not totally eliminated from their system, it can develop this resistance that hinders the
treatment. Even a more worrying strain has been discovered, named as Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB),
resistant to even more drugs, its treatment is more dicult and expensive.
It is important to note that there is a dierence between being infected with tuberculosis (latent tuberculosis infection or
LTBI) and actually developing the disease (active tuberculosis or ATB). Only 10% of those infected will actually develop it.
To understand how this is possible we will describe how infection and sickness take place. LTBI occurs when bacteria responsible for the disease enters into a healthy individual via the respiratory system. The bacteria travel to the alveoli, where
is absorbed by an alveolar macrophage. Inside the macrophage it multiplies and eventually destroys the macrophage. This
process is repeated with dierent macrophages until there is an immune response that encapsulates and expels the bacteria.
The bacteria are driven to the superior bronchial space in order to be expelled, but once it is there it can re-enter through
the aerosols and cause another lesion. In immunodecient individuals (HIV infected or other causes) the immune response
can be not enough to stop the cycle and thus the individual would develop ATB. However, there is another risk regarding
this cycle, the bacteria may reach the superior lobe of the lung, where the oxygen concentration is superior to that on the
alveoli, making it an easier environment to the infecting vector. If that would be the case in incompetent hosts, there would
be an inammatory response, that could lead to tissue destruction and forming cavities. This reaction is not as frequent
in immunodecient hosts as it is in immunocompetent ones, since the rst do not show such a strong inammatory response.
Mathematical models in epidemiology are tool of great importance in the study of the dynamics of a disease. Multiple
schemes have been used for this purpose, from the basic models of dierential equations with compartments (SEIR, SIR,
SIS...) to stochastic models which may focus in an individual scale. Along with this dierent schemes, some variations of
models have allowed obtaining more realistic results by taking into account heterogeneities in the population. For example,
variation within age groups, gender, or even the eects of vaccination.
In the specic case of tuberculosis this might be of great help, for example the incidence between men and women is very
dierent, sometimes even a 50% dierence, and so it is for age. Other aspects that might be worth to consider when attempting to model tuberculosis is HIV incidence, which is a crucial risk factor. When trying to build a model of tuberculosis
it might be wise to consider the location to simulate, the situation of the disease in developed countries such as western
Europe is very dierent from that of some African countries. Specically for European communities the incidence is so low
that considering continuous dierential equation model might not make any sense and a method focused in smaller scale
may be have a better chance in obtaining good and reliable results. An example of one of such method is agent-based
modelling (ABM).
Agent-based models are mathematical models constructed using the bottom-up approach, i.e., by modelling the elemental
parts of the system and the relationships between them, one can obtain the behaviour of the whole system. ABM models
have been used in multiple elds, from social sciences to markets, economics and even for military purposes. As stated
before, the bottom- up approach would be benecial for the study of tuberculosis in a small community, since it would
describe more precisely the interactions with individuals, and the dynamics arising from them.