Order reprints

Dynamics of a diffusive age-structured HBV model with saturating incidence

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MBE2016,5,935doi:10.3934/mbe.2016024

In this paper, we propose and investigate an age-structured hepatitis B virus (HBV) model with saturating incidence and spatial diffusion where the viral contamination process is described by the age-since-infection. We first analyze the well-posedness of the initial-boundary values problem of the model in the bounded domain $\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ and obtain an explicit formula for the basic reproductive number $R_0$ of the model. Then we investigate the global behavior of the model in terms of $R_0$: if $R_0\leq1$, then the uninfected steady state is globally asymptotically stable, whereas if $R_0>1$, then the infected steady state is globally asymptotically stable. In addition, when $R_0>1$, by constructing a suitable Lyapunov-like functional decreasing along the travelling waves to show their convergence towards two steady states as $t$ tends to $\pm\infty$, we prove the existence of traveling wave solutions. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the theoretical results.