Modelling the effects of human papillomavirus in cervical cells

Abstract

Worldwide, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women, after breast cancer. The prevalence of this malignant disease is estimated at 1.4 million cases worldwide, causing about 290,000 deaths and 500,000 new cases per year, of which 80% correspond to women living in developing countries. In this work we propose a family of ordered models for basal cells of the cervix corresponding to different stages ranging from normal cells to the formation of precancerous lesions. We analyse the first member of the family analytically and for the second member we developed a non-standard numerical method in order to extract some biological information.

Keywords:

• cervical cancer
• advection diffusion reaction model
• invasion stages
• HPV infection

2010 AMS Subject Classifications:

• 00A71
• 35Q92