A CTL-INCLUSIVE MATHEMATICAL MODEL FOR ANTIRETROVIRAL TREATMENT OF HIV INFECTION

Treatment of HIV infection has traditionally consisted of antiretroviral therapy (ART), a regimen of pharmaceutical treatments that often produces unwanted physical side effects and can become costly over long periods of time. Motivated by a way to control the spread of HIV in the body without the need for large quantities of medicine, researchers have explored treatment methods which rely on stimulating an individual's immune response, such as the cytotoxic lymphocyte (CTL) response, in addition to the usage of antiretroviral drugs. This paper investigates theoretically and numerically the effect of immune effectors in modeling HIV pathogenesis, our results suggest the significant impact of the immune response on the control of the virus during primary infection. Qualitative aspects (including positivity, stability, uncertainty, and sensitivity analysis) are addressed. Additionally, by introducing drug therapy, we analyze numerically the model to assess the effect of treatment. Our results show that the inclusion of the CTL compartment produces a higher rebound for an individual's healthy helper T-cell compartment than does drug therapy alone. Furthermore, we quantitatively characterize successful drugs or drug combination scenarios.