Combinatorial Optimization in Rapidly Mutating Drug-Resistant Viruses

Richard H. Lathrop () and Michael J. Pazzani ()
Additional contact information
Richard H. Lathrop: University of California
Michael J. Pazzani: University of California

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, 1999, vol. 3, issue 2, No 9, 320 pages

Abstract: Abstract Resistance to chemicals is a common current problem in many pests and pathogens that formerly were controlled by chemicals. An extreme case occurs in rapidly mutating viruses such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), where the emergence of selective drug resistance within an individual patient may become an important factor in treatment choice. The HIV patient subpopulation that already has experienced at least one treatment failure due to drug resistance is considered more challenging to treat because the treatment options have been reduced. A triply nested combinatorial optimization problem occurs in computational attempts to optimize HIV patient treatment protocol (drug regimen) with respect to drug resistance, given a set of HIV genetic sequences from the patient. In this paper the optimization problem is characterized, and the objects involved are represented computationally. An implemented branch-and-bound algorithm that computes a solution to the problem is described and proved correct. Data shown includes empirical timing results on representative patient data, example clinical output, and summary statistics from an initial small-scale human clinical trial.

Keywords: HIV; retrovirus; virus; clinical treatment; drug resistance; mutants; mutations; artificial intelligence; expert system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1023/A:1009846028730 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jcomop:v:3:y:1999:i:2:d:10.1023_a:1009846028730

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/10878

DOI: 10.1023/A:1009846028730

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization is currently edited by Thai, My T.

More articles in Journal of Combinatorial Optimization from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().