Diffusion-Chemotaxis Model of Effects of Cortisol on Immune Response to Human Immunodeficiency virus

• Main Authors: Samuel Shikaa, Gill Vinod
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter 2018-09-01
• Series: Nonlinear Engineering
• Subjects: chemotaxis system; radial basis functions; cortisol; 93a30; 92b08; 65p10; 65p35
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/nleng-2017-0018

In quest to contain and subsequently eradication Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the society, mathematical modelling remains an important research tool. In this paper, we formulated a mathematical model to study the effects of cortisol on immune response to HIV capturing the roles played by dendritic cells, T helper cells, regulatory T cells and cytotoxic T cells in the virus replication dynamics. The primary source of concentration of cortisol in this work is through psychological stress. Numerical experiments are performed to examine the effect of cortisol on selective inhibition of antigen presentation activities and up-regulation of naive cytotoxic T cells activation in the case of acute and persistent stressful conditions.