HIV reservoirs are dominated by genetically younger and clonally enriched proviruses.

ABSTRACT: In order to cure HIV, we need to better understand the within-host evolutionary origins of the small reservoir of genome-intact proviruses that persists within infected cells during antiretroviral therapy (ART). Most prior studies on reservoir evolutionary dynamics however did not discriminate genome-intact proviruses from the vast background of defective ones. We reconstructed within-host pre-ART HIV evolutionary histories in six individuals and leveraged this information to infer the ages of intact and defective proviruses sampled after an average >9 years on ART, along with the ages of rebound and low-level/isolated viremia occurring during this time. We observed that the longest-lived proviruses persisting on ART were exclusively defective, usually due to large deletions. In contrast,

SUBMITTER: Kinloch NN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10120704 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature