HTLV/HIV dual infection: Modeling and analysis

Abstract

Human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are two famous retroviruses that share similarities in their genomic organization, and differ in their life cycle as well. It is known that HTLV-I and HIV have in common a way of transmission via direct contact with certain body fluids related to infected patients. Thus, it is not surprising that a single-infected person with one of these viruses can be dually infected with the other virus. In the literature, many researchers have devoted significant efforts for modeling and analysis of HTLV or HIV single infection. However, the dynamics of HTLV/HIV dual infection has not been formulated. In the present paper, we formulate an HTLV/HIV dual infection model. The model includes the impact of the Cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTLs) immune response, which is important to control the dual infection. The model describes the interaction between uninfected CD4+ T cells, HIV-infected cells, HTLV-infected cells, free HIV particles, HIV-specific CTLs, and HTLV-specific CTLs. We establish that the solutions of the model are non-negative and bounded. We calculate all steady states of the model and deduce the threshold parameters which determine the existence and stability of the steady states. We prove the global asymptotic stability of all steady states by utilizing the Lyapunov function and Lyapunov–LaSalle asymptotic stability theorem. We solve the system numerically to illustrate the our main results. In addition, we compared between the dynamics of single and dual infections.