GLOBAL ANALYSIS FOR A DELAY - DISTRIBUTED VIRAL INFECTION MODEL WITH ANTIBODIES AND GENERAL NONLINEAR INCIDENCE RATE

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the global stability analysis of a viral infection model with antibody immune response. The incidence rate is given by a general function of the populations of the uninfected target cells, infected cells and free viruses. The model has been incorporated with two types of intracellular distributed time delays to describe the time required for viral contacting an uninfected cell and releasing new infectious viruses. We have established a set of conditions on the general incidence rate function and determined two threshold parameters R 0 (the basic infection reproduction number) and R 1 (the antibody immune response activation number) which are sufficient to determine the global dynamics of the model. The global asymptotic stability of the equilibria of the model has been proven by using Lyapunov theory and applying LaSalle’s invariance principle.