ncts

The brain is a critical reservoir of HIV, causing viral persistence under antiretroviral therapy, mainly because the blood-brain barrier (BBB) poses an obstacle to the entry of antiretroviral drugs into the brain. The presence of HIV in the brain often leads to HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND), such as encephalitis and early-onset dementia. In this talk, I will present a novel mathematical model describing virus dynamics in the brain. We use experimental data from SIV-infected macaques to identify key model parameters related to brain infection, including transfer across BBB. We also extend our model by including the effects of antiretroviral therapy and perform a thorough analysis to identify the ideal treatment protocol for HIV control in the brain. Our models predict that the brain can be a vital reservoir causing long-term virus persistence, and the choice of drugs may play a critical role in mitigating HIV in the brain. Furthermore, I will discuss the inter-compartmental correlation between HIV RNA data measured at different brain compartments of SIV-infected macaques and use these correlations to develop metapopulation models of HIV distributions within the brain compartments.