Highly active antiretroviral therapy restores CD4+ Vbeta T-cell repertoire in patients with primary acute HIV infection but not in treatment-naive HIV+ patients with severe chronic infection.
In drug-naive HIV+ patients, we analyzed the effects of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) on the reconstitution of the T-cell receptor (TCR) repertoire. We followed 2 groups of patients for 1 year: 18 individuals who experienced acute HIV infection and 24 patients who had HIV infection for many years but never took HAART. They were compared with 10 healthy controls who were longitudinally analyzed for the same period. We performed cytofluorometric analysis of the Vbeta TCR repertoire and detected the clonality of different Vbeta families by the spectratyping method. A new statistical approach based on the use of mixed models was then employed to analyze the data. Before the beginning of therapy, the repertoire of patients with acute or chronic infection was significantly different from that of healthy controls. After therapy, patients with acute HIV infection showed an improvement of the repertoire among either CD4+ or CD8+ T lymphocytes. Conversely, patients with chronic infection were capable of changing their repertoire among CD8+ but not CD4+ T lymphocytes. Our results indicate that HAART can restore the T-cell repertoire in individuals whose immune system is not severely compromised by the infection.
Cossarizza
Andrea
A
Department of Biomedical Sciences, Section of General Pathology, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia School of Medicine, Modena, Italy. cossariz@unimo.it
Poccia
Fabrizio
F
Agrati
Chiara
C
D'Offizi
Gianpiero
G
Bugarini
Roberto
R
Pinti
Marcello
M
Borghi
Vanni
V
Mussini
Cristina
C
Esposito
Roberto
R
Ippolito
Giuseppe
G
Narciso
Pasquale
P
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D023241:Antiretroviral Therapy, Highly Active; D001800:Blood Specimen Collection / Q000379:methods; D018791:CD4 Lymphocyte Count; D016516:CD4-CD8 Ratio; D005260:Female; D005434:Flow Cytometry; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000276:immunology*; D006679:HIV Seropositivity / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015233:Models, Statistical; D016693:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta / Q000097:blood*; D012016:Reference Values; D019562:Viral Load
D016693:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta