First passage probability distributions in Markov models and the HIV incubation distribution under treatment (Q1334731)

The HIV incubation is the random time period between the time of HIV infection and the time of AIDS onset. The paper models the different infectious stages of the incubation period by a finite Markov chain with continuous time, \(k+1\) transient states and one absorbing state. After proving some general results for the first passage distribution, the author proceeds to derive exact HIV incubation distributions under treatment of antiviral drugs such as AZT under some general assumptions. Furthermore, aspects like side effects of the drug treatment, combination effects of drugs and prophylaxis, or effect reduction over time are included. It is shown that the resulting distributions are mixtures of generalized Gamma distributions.