Figure 6.

Before flare interventions: simulations for patient 416. (A) Instead of decreasing the dose of corticosteroids and immunosuppressants at 2 months before flare (as shown in Fig. 1), maintaining the therapy dosage lowers the levels of both pro-inflammation and damage; s_i = 0.005 I-units day^-1, s_id = 0.015 I-units day^-1, s_a = 0.05 A-units/day, at 2 months before flare (solid curves); s_i = 0.001 I-units day^-1, s_id = 0.003 I-units day^-1, s_a = 0.1 A-units/day, at 2 months before flare (dashed curves). (B) Increasing the half-life of the anti-inflammatory mediators by decreasing the decay rate μ_a, also controls the inflammation wave; μ_a = 2.2/day (solid curves); μ_a = 1.1/day (dashed curves). All other parameters are as listed in Table 1 and Table 2.