Mathematical Modelling of HIV Within-Host Evolution

Abstract

The majority of hypotheses suggested to explain the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) progression explains the particularities of the disease by a very high mutability and evolvability of the virus. For HIV, several mechanisms of mutation are possible, and it is reasonable to assume that a mechanistic mathematical model of HIV evolution reflect these mechanisms. In this contribution, we formulate three different mathematical models of within-host HIV evolution that corresponds to three different virus mutation mechanisms. Simulations demonstrate that, for realistic rates of evolution, either of the three models leads to a very similar (and for some models to identical) outcome and, hence, only one of the mechanisms (presumably, the simplest one) can be used in simulations.