Global dynamics of a periodic viral infection model incorporating diffusion and antiretroviral therapy

Abstract

A new viral infection model with cell-to-cell infection and periodic antiretroviral therapy was proposed and analyzed. With the help of defined basic reproduction number [Formula: see text], we proved that if [Formula: see text], then the infection-free steady state is globally attractive. If [Formula: see text], then the infection is uniformly persistent. Furthermore, the globally asymptotical stability of infection-free steady state has been established for the critical case of [Formula: see text]. Also, the global asymptotic stability of the infection steady state for a special case of the model has been established by applying the method of Lyapunov. Numerical simulations show that increasing the drug efficacy for blocking virus-to-cell infection, cell-to-cell infection and producing non-infectious virus contributes to weakening the severity of viral infection.