Mathematical Modeling of Age-Structured Viral Infections: Integrating Virus-to-Cell and Direct Cell Transmission.

Authors

Zizi Wang

Published in

Mathematical biosciences. Pages 109809. Sep 09, 2026. Epub Sep 09, 2026.

Abstract

Viral infection dynamics are influenced by both the maturation age of viral particles and multiple transmission pathways. We develop a novel age-structured PDE model that unifies virus-to-cell and direct cell-to-cell transmission, tracking viral density as a function of infection age with general nonlinear incidence. We establish well-posedness and the existence of a global compact attractor. The explicit basic reproduction number R₀ acts as a sharp threshold: if R₀<1, the infection-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable; if R₀>1, a unique infected steady state exists and is shown to be globally stable under a proportionality condition on the incidence functions. This is proven by constructing a Lyapunov functional and employing persistence theory. Our framework elucidates how age structure and dual transmission routes jointly determine infection outcomes, providing a theoretical basis for assessing strategies aimed at disrupting viral persistence, such as vaccines or antiviral therapies.

PMID:
42716428
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 10 Sep 2026.

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