A singularly perturbed HIV model with treatment and antigenic variation.

We study the long term dynamics and the multiscale aspects of a within-host HIV model that takes into account both mutation and treatment with enzyme inhibitors. This model generalizes a number of other models that have been extensively used to describe the HIV dynamics. Since the free virus dynamics occur on a much faster time-scale than cell dynamics, the model has two intrinsic time scales and should be viewed as a singularly perturbed system. Using Tikhonov's theorem we prove that the model can be approximated by a lower dimensional nonlinear model. Furthermore, we show that this reduced system is globally asymptotically stable by using Lyapunov's stability theory.