Longterm existence of solutions of a reaction diffusion system with non-local terms modeling an immune response -- an interpretation-orientated proof

Abstract

This paper shows the global existence and boundedness of solutions of a reaction diffusion system modeling liver infections. The existence proof is presented step by step and the focus lies on the interpretation of intermediate results in the context of liver infections which is modeled. Non-local effects in the dynamics between the virus and the immune system cells coming from the immune response in the lymphs lead to an integro-partial differential equation. While existence theorems for parabolic partial differential equations are textbook examples in the field, the additional integral term requires new approaches to proving the global existence of a solution. This allows to set up an existence proof with a focus on interpretation leading to more insight in the system and in the modeling perspective at the same time. We show the boundedness of the solution in the $L^1(Ω)$- and the $L^2(Ω)$-norms, and use these results to prove the global existence and boundedness of the solution. A core element of the proof is the handling of oppositely acting mechanisms in the reaction term, which occur in all population dynamics models and which results in reaction terms with opposite monotonicity behavior. In the context of modeling liver infections, the boundedness in the $L^\infty(Ω)$-norm has practical relevance: Large immune responses lead to strong inflammations of the liver tissue. Strong inflammations negatively impact the health of an infected person and lead to grave secondary diseases. The gained rough estimates are compared with numerical tests.