Variant assumptions made in deriving equilibrium solutions to Little et al (PLoS Comput Biol 2009 5(10) e1000539)

TL;DR

This paper examines how slight variations in assumptions affect the derivation of equilibrium solutions in reaction-diffusion models of atherosclerosis, confirming that core results remain consistent despite these changes.

Contribution

It introduces alternative assumptions for deriving equilibrium solutions in reaction-diffusion models of atherosclerosis, analyzing their impact on previous numerical results.

Findings

Core numerical results remain unchanged under variant assumptions

Alternative assumptions do not significantly alter the model's conclusions

Equilibrium solutions are robust to small assumption variations

Abstract

The paper of Little et al. (PloS Comput Biol 2009 5(10) e1000539) outlined a system of reaction-diffusion equations that were used to describe induction of atherosclerotic disease. These were solved by considering an equilibrium solution and small perturbations around this equilibrium. Here we consider slight variant sets of assumptions that could be used to derive equilibrium solutions. In general they do not imply any change in the numerical results relating to monocyte chemo-attractant protein-1 (MCP-1) presented in that paper.