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Amplifying and Quantifying HIV-1 RNA in HIV Infected Individuals with Viral Loads Below the Limit of Detection by Standard Clinical Assays
Published on: September 26, 2011
The dispersion of age differences between partners and the asymptotic dynamics of the HIV epidemic
Hippolyte d'Albis1, Emmanuelle Augeraud-Véron, Elodie Djemai
1Paris School of Economics, Université Paris 1, CES, 106 boulevard de l'Hopital, 75013, Paris, France. dalbis@univ-paris1.fr
Abstract:
In this paper, the effect of a change in the distribution of age differences between sexual partners on the dynamics of the HIV epidemic is studied. In a gender- and age-structured compartmental model, it is shown that if the variance of the distribution is small enough, an increase in this variance strongly increases the basic reproduction number. Moreover, if the variance is large enough, the mean age difference barely affects the basic reproduction number. We, therefore, conclude that the local stability of the disease-free equilibrium relies more on the variance than on the mean.
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