NUMERICAL OPTIMIZATION APPLIED TO THE TREATMENT OF AIDS IN THE PRESENCE OF MUTANT HIV VIRUS

Abstract: Here is presented an application of Optimal Control to a model describing the dynamics of an infection by HIV where mutant forms are present. It extends authors’ previous results where mutant drug-resistant HIV virus were absent. The model adopted, proposed in (Nowak, et al., 1997) deals with the dynamics of viral concentrations. The control is the dose of an alternative drug exhibiting different activity from the primitive and mutant HIV viruses. The cost function is a weighted sum of the total viral load at a fixed time horizon and the accumulated side effects. Simulation results show that the optimal control scheme can achieve improved quality of the treatment