Maximum a Posteriori Estimation in Dynamical Models of Primary HIV Infection
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Julia Drylewicz
Dynamical models based on ordinary differential equations (ODE) are increasingly used to model viral infections such as HIV. This kind of model is based on biological knowledge and takes into account complex non-linear interactions between markers. The estimation of such models is made difficult by the lack of analytical solutions and several methods based on Bayesian or frequentist approaches have been proposed. However, because of identifiability issues, in a frequentist approach some parameters have to be fixed to values taken from the literature. In this paper we propose a Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) approach to estimate all the parameters of ODE models, allowing prior knowledge on biological parameters to be taken into account. The MAP approach has two main advantages: the computation time can be fast (relative to the full Bayesian approach) and it is straightforward to incorporate complex prior information. We applied this method to an original model of primary HIV infection taking into account several biological hypotheses for the HIV-immune system interaction. Parameters were estimated using HIV RNA load and CD4 count measurements of 710 patients from the Concerted Action on SeroConversion to AIDS and Death in Europe (CASCADE) Collaboration.
©2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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- Maximum a Posteriori Estimation in Dynamical Models of Primary HIV Infection
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Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Maximum a Posteriori Estimation in Dynamical Models of Primary HIV Infection
- Is The Age-Period-Cohort Model Well Suited to an Epidemic Context? The Case of the French BSE Epidemic
- Estimating Trends in Incidence, Time-to-Diagnosis and Undiagnosed Prevalence using a CD4-based Bayesian Back-calculation
- Conference Proceedings
- HIV Sexual Networks: The Montreal Experience
- Heterogeneity in Number and Type of Sexual Contacts in a Gay Urban Cohort
- Episodic HIV Risk Behavior Can Greatly Amplify HIV Prevalence and the Fraction of Transmissions from Acute HIV Infection
