Global Analysis of a Class of Hiv Models with Immune Response and Antigenic Variation

Abstract. We study the global stability of two models for the HIV virus dynamics, that take into account the CTL immune response and antigenic variation. We show that both models are globally asymptotically stable, by using appropriate Lyapunov functions. For both models, we characterise the stable equilibrium points for the entire biologically relevant parameter range. In the model with antigenic variation, which can have a large number of equilibrium points, this allows us to determine what is the diversity of the persistent strains.