Author(s)

Jeremy J. Thibodeaux¹, Michael Hennessey²

¹Department of Mathematical Sciences, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA.
²Department of Mathematical Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA.

In this paper we modify previous models to develop a new model of within-host dengue infection without the assumption that monocyte production is constant. We show that this new model exhibits behavior not seen in previous models. We then proceed by obtaining an expression for the net reproductive rate of the virus and thus establish a stability result. We also perform a sensitivity analysis to test various treatment strategies and find that two strategies might be fruitful. One is the reduction of the infection rate of monocytes by viruses and the other, more effective, theoretical approach is to reduce the number of new viruses per infected monocyte.

Dengue, Within-Host Model, Net Reproductive Rate, Treatment Scenarios

Thibodeaux, J. and Hennessey, M. (2016) A Within-Host Model of Dengue Infection with a Non-Constant Monocyte Production Rate. Applied Mathematics, 7, 2382-2393. doi: 10.4236/am.2016.718187.