Global properties of a virus dynamics model with self-proliferation of CTLs

A viral infection model with self-proliferation of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) is proposed and its global dynamics is obtained. When the per capita self-proliferation rate of CTLs is sufficient large, an infection-free but immunity-activated equilibrium always exists and is globally asymptotically stable if the basic reproduction number of virus is less than a threshold value, which means that the immune effect still exists though virus be eliminated. Qualitative numerical simulations further indicate that the increase of per capita self-proliferation rate may lead to more severe infection outcome, which may provide insight into the failure of immune therapy.

提出了一个具有细胞毒性T淋巴细胞（CTLs）自我增殖的病毒感染模型，并得到了其全局动力学。当CTLs的人均自我增殖率足够大时，如果病毒的基本再生数小于一个阈值，那么无感染但免疫激活的平衡总是存在且是全局渐近稳定的，这意味着尽管病毒被消除，但免疫效应仍然存在。定性数值模拟进一步表明，人均自我增殖率的增加可能导致更严重的感染结果，这可能为免疫治疗的失败提供见解。