Distinct blood CD3+ CD14+ T Cell-Monocyte complexes harbor HIV and are dynamic, glucose-dependent and increased in individuals with glucose intolerance
Persistent systemic inflammation in persons with HIV (PWH) is accompanied by an increased risk of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. Yet, changes in the innate and the adaptive immune in PWH who develop cardiometabolic disease remain insufficiently defined. Using mass cytometry we showed that PWH with prediabetes/diabetes had a significantly higher proportion of circulating CD14+ monocytes complexed with T cells. The CD3+ T cells and CD14+ monocytes consisted of dynamic heterogeneous complexes. Furthermore, we detected more HIV DNA in T cell-monocyte complexes compared to CD14+ monocytes or CD4+ T cells alone. Our results demonstrate that CD3+ CD14+ T cell-monocyte pairs are functional and physically interacting immune cell complexes that are higher among PWH with diabetes, suggesting that they may contribute to metabolic disease pathogenesis, and provide a strong incentive for future studies to investigate T cell-monocyte immune complexes as mechanistic in HIV cure reservoir and other diseases of aging. Overall design: PBMCs were isolated from the blood\ patients and single cell RNA was sequenced through 10X Genomics.