Numerical modelling of the perturbation of HIV-1 during combination anti-retroviral therapy

A competitive, chaos-free, implicit, finite-difference method is developed and used for a novel deterministic model for the perturbation of HIV by com bination antiretroviral therapy. The compartmental model monitors the inter action between HIV and CD4+ T cells, its principal target and site of repli cation in vivo, in the presence of reverse transcription inhibitors and pro tease inhibitors. The model exhibits two steady states, an uninfected (triv ial) steady state (with no virus present) and an endemically infected state (with virus and infected T cells present). Stability and bifurcation analy ses together with numerical simulations of the resulting dynamical system a re reported. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.