Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 222, 769-776 (2013)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2013-01880-5

Regular Article

Autoimmune control of lesion growth in CNS with minimal damage

CSIR Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation (C-MMACS) Bangalore 560017, India

^a e-mail: mathankraja@gmail.com
^b e-mail: kmohan@cmmacs.ernet.in

Received: 22 March 2013
Revised: 3 May 2013
Published online: 11 July 2013

Abstract

Lesions in central nervous system (CNS) and their growth leads to debilitating diseases like Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Alzheimer's etc. We developed a model earlier [1, 2] which shows how the lesion growth can be arrested through a beneficial auto-immune mechanism. We compared some of the dynamical patterns in the model with different facets of MS. The success of the approach depends on a set of control parameters and their phase space was shown to have a smooth manifold separating the uncontrolled lesion growth region from the controlled. Here we show that an optimal set of parameter values exist in the model which minimizes system damage while, at once, achieving control of lesion growth.