Assessing the Effects of Treatment in HIV-TB Co-infection Model

TL;DR

This paper develops a mathematical model for HIV-TB co-infection, analyzing how different treatment strategies impact disease dynamics, eradication potential, and mortality, highlighting the importance of targeted treatments for both diseases.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive HIV-TB co-infection model with treatment effects and analyzes the impact of different treatment strategies on disease eradication and mortality.

Findings

Treatment of TB alone significantly reduces infections and deaths.

Eradication is difficult without treating both HIV and TB.

Co-infection treatment combined with single disease treatments yields the best outcomes.

Abstract

We propose a population model for HIV-TB co-infection dynamics by considering treatments for HIV infection, active tuberculosis and co-infection. The HIV only and TB only models are analyzed separately, as well as full model. The basic reproduction numbers for TB ($\mathcal{R}_0^T$) and HIV ($\mathcal{R}_0^H$) and overall reproduction number for the system $\mathcal{R}_0= \max\{\mathcal{R}_0^T, \mathcal{R}_0^H\}$ are computed. The equilibria and their stability are studied. The main model undergoes supercritical transcritical bifurcation at $\mathcal{R}_0^T=1$ and $\mathcal{R}_0^H=1$ whereas the parameters $\beta^*=\beta e$ and $\lambda^*=\lambda \sigma$ act as bifurcation parameters, respectively. Numerical simulation claims the existence of interior equilibrium when both the reproduction numbers are greater than unity. We explore the effect of early and late HIV treatment on disease-induced deaths during the TB treatment course. Mathematical analysis of our model shows that successful disease eradication requires treatment of single disease, that is, treatment for HIV only and TB only infected individuals with addition to co-infection treatment and in absence of which disease eradication is extremely difficult even for $\mathcal{R}_0<1$. When both the diseases are epidemic, the treatment for TB only infected individuals is very effective in reducing the total infected population and disease-induced deaths in comparison to the treatment for HIV infected individuals while these are minimum when both the single disease treatments are given with co-infection treatment.