The treatment of HIV is complicated by the evolution of antiviral drug resistant virus and the limited availability of antigenically independent antiviral regimens. The consequences to the patient of successive virological failures is such that many strategies to minimize the occurrence of such failures are being investigated. In this paper, a Markov chain-based model of virological failure is introduced. This model considers sequential failure events, and differentiates between several modes of virological failure. This model is then used to evaluate the resistance- targeted interventions by means of testing the impact of a viral load preconditioning strategy on total treatment regimen longevity in HIV patients. It is shown that a proposed intervention targeting pre-existing resistance has the potential to increase the expected time to three sequential virological failures by an average of 3.3 years per patient. When combined with an intervention targeting patient compliance, the total potential increase in the time to three sequential virological failures is as high as 11.2 years. The impact on patient and public health is discussed.
Excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) represents a major public health concern. In this paper, we present a dynamical systems model that describes how a behavioral intervention can influence weight gain during pregnancy. The model relies on the integration of a mechanistic energy balance with a dynamical behavioral model. The behavioral model incorporates some well-accepted concepts from psychology: the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the principle of self-regulation which describes how internal processes within the individual can serve to reinforce the positive outcomes of an intervention. A hypothetical case study is presented to illustrate the basic workings of the model and demonstrate how the proper design of the intervention can counteract natural trends towards declines in healthy eating and reduced physical activity during the course of pregnancy. The model can be used by behavioral scientists to evaluate decision rules for adaptive time-varying behavioral interventions, or as the open-loop model for hybrid model predictive control algorithms acting as decision frameworks for such interventions.

