Bacterial pneumonia is one of the most prevalent infectious diseases and has high mortality in sensitive patients (children, elderly and immunocompromised). Although an infection, the disease alters the alveolar epithelium homeostasis and hinders normal breathing, often with fatal consequences. A special case is hospitalized aged patients, which present a high risk of infection and death because of the community acquired version of the Streptococcus pneumoniae pneumonia. There is evidence that early antibiotics treatment decreases inflammatory response during pneumonia. Here we investigate mechanistically this strategy using a multi-level mathematical model, which describes the 24 first hours after infection of a single alveolus from the key signaling networks behind activation of epithelium to the dynamics of local immune response. With the model, we simulated pneumonia in aged and young patients subjected to different antibiotics timing.

This work has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) [e:Med CAPSyS, 01ZX1304F to J.V.] and the Bavarian Ministry of Economy, Energy and Technology (Gaminfection-UK Erlangen, MED-1810-0023 to J.V.). We also acknowledge support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg within the funding program Open Access Publishing. We want to acknowledge Martin Eberhardt for technical support.