Individuals infected with HIV exhibit both severe immune deficiency and aberrant inflammation, resulting in susceptibility to secondary infection as the disease progresses. HIV-associated deficiencies in adaptive immune responses have been well described; however, the effects of HIV on innate immune responses are not fully understood. A new study in JCI Insight demonstrates that a high viral load associates with a dampened inflammatory response in innate immune cells from HIV-infected individuals. Eileen Scully, Marcus Altfeld, and colleagues from the Ragon Institute and the Heinrich Pette Institute evaluated multiple samples taken from a cohort of patients prior to and after initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART). Compared to cells collected prior to the initiation of ART, innate immune cells collected after patients started ART exhibited an increased response to inflammatory stimuli. Compared to other factors, patient viral load was the most predictive of the innate immune cell response. In monocytes, epigenetic modifications were observed at the locus of the gene encoding pro-inflammatory cytokine TNFα that associated with high levels of virus. Together, the results of this study identify viral load as a driver of innate immune dysfunction in HIV-infected individuals.
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TITLE:
Innate immune reconstitution with suppression of HIV-1
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Eileen Scully
Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard
E-mail: escully@partners.org
Marcus Altfeld
Heinrich Pette Institute
Email: marcus.altfeld@hpi.uni-hamburg.de
View this article at: http://insight.jci.org/articles/view/85433?key=d5c44073f9a666b8f7d9
JCI Insight is the newest publication from the American Society of Clinical Investigation, a nonprofit honor organization of physician-scientists. JCI Insight is dedicated to publishing a range of translational biomedical research with an emphasis on rigorous experimental methods and data reporting. All articles published in JCI Insight are freely available at the time of publication. For more information about JCI Insight and all of the latest articles go to http://www.insight.jci.org .
JCI Insight