A Stochastic Model for the HIV/AIDS Dynamic Evolution

This paper analyses the HIV/AIDS dynamic evolution as defined by CD4 levels, from a macroscopic point of view, by means of homogeneous semi-Markov stochastic processes. A large number of results have been obtained including the following conditional probabilities: an infected patient will be in state j after a time t given that she/he entered at time 0 (starting time) in state i; that she/he will survive up to a time t, given the starting state; that she/he will continue to remain in the starting state up to time t; that she/he reach stage j of the disease in the next transition, if the previous state was i and no state change occurred up to time t. The immunological states considered are based on CD4 counts and our data refer to patients selected from a series of 766 HIV-positive intravenous drug users