Global dynamics for an age-structured HIV virus infection model with cellular infection and antiretroviral therapy

An age-structured within-host virus infection model with both virus-to-cell and cell-to-cell infection and antiretroviral therapy is investigated. The global stability analysis of the model is carried out in terms of the basic reproduction number R0 by constructing Lyapunov functionals. If R0≤1, the infection-free steady state is globally asymptotically stable; if R0>1, the infection steady state is globally asymptotically stable. The influence of drug therapy on cell-to-cell infection is discussed, which shows that cell-to-cell infection is important for the final outcome of the HIV virus infection and blocking cell-to-cell infection can effectively suppress the HIV virus spread. Moreover, numerical simulations are performed to study the dynamical behavior of solutions of the models. The results show that both the viral production rate and the death rate of infected cells play an important role in the viral dynamics of the model.