The common pattern observed in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected
patients is a three-stage behavior in their T cell and virus counts: the
primary infection, the latency period and the onset of acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome(AIDS). Here we present a cellular automata model
that describes the spread of HIV infection in lymphoid tissues, taking into
account the global features of the usual immune response to any virus, the
fast mutation rate of the virus, and the spatial localization that may occur
in the lymphoid nodes. Our results reproduce the entire course of infection
and are in good agreement with the experimental findings. We also found that
the infected cells organize themselves into spatial structures, which may be
associated to the in vitro structures called syncytia, which are responsible
for the decrease on the concentration of uninfected cells, leading to AIDS.
We briefly discuss also the robustness of the model and the distribution of
the latency periods.
Audio requires RealPlayer by RealNetworks.