Fig. 4.

Model predictions of HDV decline under BLV monotherapy or in combination with anti-HDV drugs that block viral production.

Model prediction to reach <1 virus copy in representative patients’ total extracellular BF under combination therapy with blocking of ∼100% of HDV entry by BLV monotherapy (dashed-dotted black lines) or in combination with drug(s) that block ε = 99% of HDV production (solid black lines, blue and green dashed lines). The HDV RNA curve for ε = 0 is also shown for reference. Limit of HDV detection in the blood is shown as the upper horizontal line. 1 virus/BF is defined as 1 virus per patients’ total extracellular BF of 15 L (lower horizontal line). Model parameters in (A) and (B) were set to reflect the P16 and P18 parameter estimates shown in Table 1. For simplicity, additional treatment effects of nucleic acid polymer in blocking HBsAg production (ε_H) and interferon-α or interferon-λ in inducing death rate of HDV-infected cells (κ) in the model (Eq. 1 and Fig. 1) were not simulated, i.e. the parameters were set ε_H = 0 and κ = 1. BF, body fluid; BLV, bulevirtide; HDV, hepatitis D virus.