Impact of a decade of successful antiretroviral therapy initiated at HIV-1 seroconversion on blood and rectal reservoirs
- Ghent University, Belgium
- Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom
Abstract
Persistent reservoirs remain the major obstacles to achieve an HIV-1 cure. Prolonged early antiretroviral therapy (ART) may reduce the extent of reservoirs and allow for virological control after ART discontinuation. We compared HIV-1 reservoirs in a cross-sectional study using PCR-based techniques in blood and tissue of early treated seroconverters, late treated patients, ART-naïve seroconverters and long-term non-progressors (LTNPs) who have spontaneous virological control without treatment. A decade of early ART reduced total and integrated HIV-1 DNA levels compared to later treatment initiation, but not reaching the low levels of LTNPs. Total HIV-1 DNA in rectal biopsies did not differ between cohorts. Importantly, lower viral transcription (unspliced RNA) and enhanced immune preservation (CD4/CD8) reminiscent of LTNPs were found in early compared to late treated patients. This suggests that early treatment is associated with some immuno-virological features of LTNPs that may improve the outcome of future interventions aimed at a functional cure.
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Ethics
Human subjects: Patient written informed consent was obtained from all the study participants.The study was approved by the Ethical Committee of Ghent University Hospital (Reference number: B670201317826) and Royal Free Hospital (Reference number: 13/LO/0729).
Copyright
© 2015, Malatinkova et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Impact of a decade of successful antiretroviral therapy initiated at HIV-1 seroconversion on blood and rectal reservoirs
eLife 4:e09115.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09115
