Significance of antiviral therapy and CTL-mediated immune response in containing hepatitis B and C virus infection

Abstract

Viral infections remain a major cause of deaths globally. Here, we focus on Hepatitis B and C viruses (HBV and HCV) infection dynamics in the liver and blood cells, taking into account non-cytotoxic and cytotoxic mediated immune response as well as antiviral therapy. The analysis of the model is presented in terms of the reproduction number, R0. The system has a globally stable disease-free equilibrium when R0 is below unit. It exhibits forward bifurcation when R0 is greater than one, with a locally asymptotically stable endemic equilibrium point. By carrying out sensitivity analysis using the Latin Hypercube Sampling scheme (LHS), we determine the key processes that are essential in containing the infection. Our results suggest that, the production of virions from blood and liver cells as well as degeneration of Cytotoxic T-Lymphocytes (CTLs) can greatly aggravate HBV and HCV infections. Moreover, CTL-mediated immune response alone cannot effectively contain the infection. Although virion production from the liver and blood as well as per-capita loss of CTLs were observed to greatly aggravate the infection, their effects imposed on the infection dynamics were not significantly different. We recommend based on the results that, use of highly effective antiviral/combination therapy to block production of new virions is an ideal approach to containing the infections.