Vitaly V. Ganusov, Richard A. Neher and Alan S. Perelson
Journal of statistical mechanics (Online), vol. 2013, P01010, 2013
10.1088/1742-5468/2013/01/P01010
Abstract
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1 or simply HIV) induces a persistent infection, which in the absence of treatment leads to AIDS and death in almost all infected individuals. HIV infection elicits a vigorous immune response starting about 2-3 weeks post infection that can lower the amount of virus in the body, but which cannot eradicate the virus. How HIV establishes a chronic infection in the face of a strong immune response remains poorly understood. It has been shown that HIV is able to rapidly change its proteins via mutation to evade recognition by virus-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). Typically, an