Patient visit behaviour shapes the virus infection dynamics in hosts

Abstract

Chronic HBV infection is a dynamic process of rapid viral replication and clearance, with large amounts of virus being produced and lost in the body daily. The patient's visit behaviour is closely related to viral load in the body, while the data-driven mathematical model still lacking. Therefore, we first include 28,912 patients to investigate the relationships between the visit behaviour and the HBV-DNA virus load. Then, we propose an HBV virus infection dynamics model that considers the patient's visit behaviour. The system is chaotic once the behaviour of patients during visits depends on the virus load. Our results may help us understand the process of viral transmission, and increasing the visit probability to the clinic can lead to stabilising HBV-DNA viral loads and further help healthcare professionals develop targeted clinical intervention strategies.