Analysis of an HIV infection model incorporating latency age and infection age.

Abstract

There is a growing interest to understand impacts of latent infection age and infection age on viral infection dynamics by using ordinary and partial differential equations. On one hand, activation of latently infected cells needs specificity antigen, and latently infected CD4+ T cells are often heterogeneous, which depends on how frequently they encountered antigens, how much time they need to be preferentially activated and quickly removed from the reservoir. On the other hand, infection age plays an important role in modeling the death rate and virus production rate of infected cells. By rigorous analysis for the model, this paper is devoted to the global dynamics of an HIV infection model subject to latency age and infection age from theoretical point of view, where the model formulation, basic reproduction number computation, and rigorous mathematical analysis, such as relative compactness and persistence of the solution semiflow, and existence of a global attractor are involved. By constructing Lyapunov functions, the global dynamics of a threshold type is established. The method developed here is applicable to broader contexts of investigating viral infection subject to age structure.