Mathematical Model on Effects of Body Protein Level on HIV Infected Humans

HIV continues to be a major global public health issue, having claimed millions of lives in the last few decades. HIV targets the immune system and weakens people’s defense against many infections and some types of cancer that people with healthy immune systems can fight off. As the virus destroys and impairs the function of immune cells, infected individuals gradually become immunodefficient. Poor nutritional status can be a predictor of mortality independent of immune status and loss of lean body mass, in particular, has been associated with mortality in patients with HIV. In this talk, we discuss a modified within-host model of HIV, incorporating body protein level interactions to the more standard model with healthy and infected CD4+ T cells, viral particles and CD8+ T cells. We show the existence and stability of infection free equilibrium, and existence of at least one infection equilibrium. We also show conditions where backward bifurcation occurs, and perform elasticity analysis on certain parameters of the model.