INVESTIGADORES
PONCE DAWSON Silvina Martha
artículos
Título:
On cell resistance and immune response time lag in a model for the HIV infection
Autor/es:
GUILLERMO SOLOVEY; FERNANDO PERUANI; SILVINA PONCE DAWSON; RITA MARIA ZORZENON DOS SANTOS
Revista:
PHYSICA A - STATISTICAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS
Referencias:
Año: 2004 vol. 343 p. 543 - 556
ISSN:
0378-4371
Resumen:
Recently, a cellular automata model has been introduced (Phys. Rev. Lett. 87
(2001) 168102) to describe the spread of the HIV infection among target
cells in lymphoid tissues. The model reproduces qualitatively the
entire course of the infection displaying, in particular, the two time
scales that characterize its dynamics. In this work, we investigate the
robustness of the model against changes in three of its parameters. Two
of them are related to the resistance of the cells to get infected. The
other one describes the time interval necessary to mount specific
immune responses. We have observed that an increase of the cell
resistance, at any stage of the infection, leads to a reduction of the
latency period, i.e., of the time interval between the primary
infection and the onset of AIDS. However, during the early stages of
the infection, when the cell resistance increase is combined with an
increase in the initial concentration of infected cells, the original
behavior is recovered. Therefore we find a long and a short latency
regime (eight and one year long, respectively) depending on the value
of the cell resistance. We have obtained, on the other hand, that
changes on the parameter that describes the immune system time lag
affects the time interval during which the primary infection occurs.
Using different extended versions of the model, we also discuss how the
two-time scale dynamics is affected when we include inhomogeneities on
the cells properties, as for instance, on the cell resistance or on the
time interval to mount specific immune responses.