The Effect of a Linear Tuning between the Antigenic Stimulations of CD4(+) T Cells and CD4(+) Tregs

We study the equilibria of an Ordinary Differencial Equation (ODE) system where CD4<mml:semantics>+</mml:semantics> effector or helper T cells and Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are present. T cells trigger an immune response in the presence of their specific antigen. Regulatory T cells (Tre...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Yusuf, AA (author)
Other Authors: Figueiredo, IP (author), Afsar, A (author), Burroughs, NJ (author), Pinto, A.A. (author), Bruno M P M Oliveira (author)
Format: article
Language:eng
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10216/126870
Country:Portugal
Oai:oai:repositorio-aberto.up.pt:10216/126870
Description
Summary:We study the equilibria of an Ordinary Differencial Equation (ODE) system where CD4<mml:semantics>+</mml:semantics> effector or helper T cells and Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are present. T cells trigger an immune response in the presence of their specific antigen. Regulatory T cells (Tregs) play a role in limiting auto-immune diseases due to their immune-suppressive ability. Here, we present explicit exact formulas that give the relationship between the concentration of T cells, the concentration of Tregs, and the antigenic stimulation of T cells, when the system is at equilibria, stable or unstable. We found a parameter region of bistability, limited by two thresholds of antigenic stimulation of T cells (hysteresis). Moreover, there are values of the slope parameter of the tuning for which an isola-center bifurcation appears, and, for some other values, there is a transcritical bifurcation. We also present time evolutions of the ODE system.