Demonstrates harmful stabilization in chronic conditions, suggesting new pathways for treatment.
This paper introduces “maladaptive plateaus,” stable but harmful states in biological systems. Using a framework based on bounded drift, bounded variation, and persistence, we show how systems can lock into pathological regimes. The stability integral O(t) captures the accumulation of stable order over time, distinguishing healthy recovery from dangerous stabilization. Applications include cancer resistance, long COVID, and chronic inflammatory diseases.
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Kabongo (2026) studied this question.
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