Full text
| |
| Author(s): |
Andressa Pinheiro
Total Authors: 1
|
| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Matemática, Estatística e Computação Científica |
| Defense date: | 2008-09-30 |
| Examining board members: |
Hyun Mo Yang;
Paulo Fernando de Arruda Mancera;
José Luiz Boldrini
|
| Advisor: | Hyun Mo Yang |
| Abstract | |
In infants and young children, rotavirus is the major cause of severe inflammation of the intestine (gastroenteritis). Rotavirus infection frequently results in fever, vomiting and diarrhea, wich symptoms are so intense that they can lead to death. This virus causes nearly a million deaths each year worldwide, mostly in developing countries. Rotavirus attacks the epithelial cells of the thin intestine and replicates in the cytoplasm and do not fully uncoat during the process of replication. The reason for their failure to fully uncoat is that the coat is resistant to protease digestion, which prevents them from being completely destroyed by the infected cell and of readily being seen by the immune system. This complex biology of rotavirus and its interaction with the immune system are the motivation of this work, that presents a model for this interaction, structured by non-linear ordinary differential equations of first-order that describes the action of the innate immune system to eliminate rotavirus. From this model, we find the trivial and non-trivial equilibrium points and analyze their stabilities, as well we analyze, comparatively, the humoral and cellular responses. (AU) | |