Virus Antibody Dynamics in Primary and Secondary Dengue Infections

TL;DR

This study models dengue virus dynamics and immune responses in primary and secondary infections, revealing critical factors influencing viral clearance and antibody production, aligning with clinical observations.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive micro-epidemic model incorporating delays, ADE, and serotype correlations to analyze dengue infection dynamics.

Findings

Viral load decreases to undetectable levels within 7-14 days.

A critical immune response parameter determines infection clearance.

Enhanced antibody production occurs in secondary infections with different serotypes.

Abstract

Dengue viral infections show unique infection patterns arising from its four serot- ypes, (DENV-1,2,3,4). Its effects range from simple fever in primary infections to potentially fatal secondary infections. We analytically and numerically analyse virus dynamics and humoral response in a host during primary and secondary dengue infection for long periods using micro-epidemic models. The models presented here incorporate time delays, antibody dependent enhancement (ADE), a dynamic switch and a correlation factor between different DENV serotypes. We find that the viral load goes down to undetectable levels within 7-14 days as is observed for dengue infection, in both cases. For primary infection, the stability analysis of steady states shows interesting dependence on the time delay involved in the production of antibodies from plasma cells. We demonstrate the existence of a critical value for the immune response parameter, beyond which the infection gets completely cured. For secondary infections with a different serotype, the homologous antibody production is enhanced due to the influence of heterologous antibodies. The antibody production is also controlled by the correlation factor, which is a measure of similarities between the different DENV serotypes involved. Our results agree with clinically observed humoral responses for primary and secondary infections.