Impact of non-separable incidence rates on global dynamics of virus model with cell-mediated, humoral immune responses

Abstract

In this paper, we study the dynamical behavior of a virus model into which cell-mediated and humoral immune responses are incorporated. The global stability of an infection-free equilibrium and four infected equilibria is established via a Lyapunov functional approach. The present construction methods are applicable to a wide range of incidence rates that are monotone increasing with respect to concentration of uninfected cells and concave with respect to the concentration of free virus particles. In addition, when the incidence rate is monotone increasing with respect to concentration of free virus particles, the functional approach plays an important role in determining the global stability of each of the four infected equilibria. This implies that the dynamical behavior of virus prevalence would be determined by basic reproduction numbers when the "saturation effect" for free virus particles appears. We point out that the incidence rate includes not only separable incidence rate but also non-separable incidence rate such as standard incidence and Beddington-DeAngelis functional response.