Author(s)

Baoling Ma¹, Jeremy J. Thibodeaux²

¹Department of Mathematics, Millersville University, Millersville, PA, USA.
²Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix, USVI, USA.

We present a first-order finite difference scheme for approximating solutions of a mathematical model of cervical cancer induced by the human papillomavirus (HPV), which consists of four nonlinear partial differential equations and a nonlinear first-order ordinary differential equation. The scheme is analyzed and used to provide an existence-uniqueness result. Numerical simulations are performed in order to demonstrate the first-order rate of convergence. A sensitivity analysis was done in order to compare the effects of two drug types, those that increase the death rate of HPV-infected cells, and those that increase the death rate of the precancerous cell population. The model predicts that treatments that affect the precancerous cell population by directly increasing the corresponding death rate are far more effective than those that increase the death rate of HPV-infected cells.

Age Structured, Cervical Cancer, Finite Difference, Human Papillomavirus, Mathematical Model

Ma, B. and Thibodeaux, J. (2023) Well-Posedness and a Finite Difference Approximation for a Mathematical Model of HPV-Induced Cervical Cancer. Applied Mathematics, 14, 151-172. doi: 10.4236/am.2023.143009.