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Updated: May 11, 2026

Pairwise Growth Competition Assay for Determining the Replication Fitness of Human Immunodeficiency Viruses
Published on: May 4, 2015
Effects of replicative fitness on competing HIV strains
Faraimunashe Chirove1, Edward M Lungu
1University of KwaZulu-Natal, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Chirovef@ukzn.ac.za
Abstract:
We develop an n-strain model to show the effects of replicative fitness of competing viral strains exerting selective density-dependant infective pressure on each other. A two strain model is used to illustrate the results. A perturbation technique and numerical simulations were used to establish the existence and stability of steady states. More than one infected steady states governed by the replicative fitness resulted from the model exhibiting either strain replacement or co-infection. We found that the presence of two or more HIV strains could result in a disease-free state that, in general, is not globally stable.
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