Maintenance of HIV-specific central and effector memory CD4 and CD8 T cells requires antigen persistence.
The HIV-specific central and effector CD4 and CD8 memory T cell populations disappear from the peripheral blood of infected individuals under highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) with a mean half-life of 6.0 and 7.7 months, respectively. By contrast, cytomegalovirus (CMV)-specific responses are stable or increase. The striking quantitative differences between T cell memory to two persistent viral infections are instructive as to how antigen dosage contributes to the maintenance of antigen-specific memory T cell responses in humans.
Sester
Urban
U
Department of Internal Medicine IV, University of the Saarland, 66421 Homburg, Germany.
Sester
Martina
M
Köhler
Hans
H
Pees
Hans W
HW
Gärtner
Barbara C
BC
Wain-Hobson
Simon
S
Bocharov
Gennady
G
Meyerhans
Andreas
A
D023241:Antiretroviral Therapy, Highly Active; D015496:CD4-Positive T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology* / Q000821:virology; D018414:CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology* / Q000821:virology; D003587:Cytomegalovirus / Q000276:immunology*; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000276:immunology*; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D007156:Immunologic Memory / Q000276:immunology*; D007700:Kinetics; D016176:T-Lymphocyte Subsets; D013602:T-Lymphocytes, Cytotoxic / Q000276:immunology* / Q000821:virology; D019562:Viral Load / Q000145:classification