Improved assays to measure and characterize the inducible HIV reservoir.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Improved assays are critical to better characterize the HIV reservoir and to reliably evaluate candidate intervention strategies. Here we describe different methods to quantify the HIV reservoir.

Methods

We developed an optimized quantitative viral outgrowth assay (QVOA) to quantify the frequency of cells harboring replication-competent HIV, which is simpler and more sensitive than classical QVOAs. We also developed new inducible RNA assays that concomitantly measure the frequency of cell-associated [ca-] (gag and tat-rev) and cell-free [cf-] HIV RNA after three days of anti-CD3/CD28 stimulation.

Findings

The median frequency of the infected cells measured after induction was 94 IQR[60-132], 16 IQR [9-29] and 2.9 IQR[1.9-6.8] cells/10⁶ CD4^+<

SUBMITTER: Massanella M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6197429 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature