The review of differential equation models of HBV infection dynamics

Understanding the infection and pathogenesis mechanism of hepatitis B virus (HBV) is very important for the prevention and treatment of hepatitis B. Mathematical models contribute to illuminate the dynamic process of HBV replication in vivo. Therefore, in this paper we review the viral dynamics in HBV infection, which may help us further understand the dynamic mechanism of HBV infection and efficacy of antiviral treatment. Firstly, we introduce a family of deterministic models by considering different biological mechanisms, such as, antiviral therapy, CTL immune response, multi-types of infected hepatocytes, time delay and spatial diffusion. Particularly, we briefly describe the stochastic models of HBV infection. Secondly, we introduce the commonly used parameter estimation methods for HBV viral dynamic models and briefly discuss how to use these methods to estimate unknown parameters (such as drug efficacy) through two specific examples. We also discuss the idea and method of model identification and use a specific example to illustrate its application. Finally, we propose three new research programs, namely, considering HBV drug-resistant strain, coupling within-host and between-host dynamics in HBV infection and linking population dynamics with evolutionary dynamics of HBV diversity.