HIV-specific T cell responses reflect substantive in vivo interactions with antigen despite long-term therapy.

ABSTRACT: Antiretroviral therapies (ARTs) abrogate HIV replication; however, infection persists as long-lived reservoirs of infected cells with integrated proviruses, which reseed replication if ART is interrupted. A central tenet of our current understanding of this persistence is that infected cells are shielded from immune recognition and elimination through a lack of antigen expression from proviruses. Efforts to cure HIV infection have therefore focused on reactivating latent proviruses to enable immune-mediated clearance, but these have yet to succeed in reducing viral reservoirs. Here, we revisited the question of whether HIV reservoirs are predominately immunologically silent from a new angle: by querying the dynamics of HIV-specific T cell responses over long-term ART for evidence of ongoin

SUBMITTER: Stevenson EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7934865 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature