A new study reported by News 24 shows that T-cells can detect HIV-1 in patients years after commencing antiretroviral therapy (ART):
In the HIV-1 proteome (the entire set of proteins expressed by the virus) for each participant, the team identified T-cell epitopes (regions of proteins that trigger an immune response). They sequenced HIV-1 ‘outgrowth’ viruses from resting CD4+ T cells and tested mutations in T-cell epitopes for their effect on the size of the T-cell response.
These strategies revealed that the majority (68%) of T-cell epitopes did not harbour any detectable escape mutations, meaning they could be recognised by circulating T cells.
“Our findings show that the majority of HIV-1-specific T cells in people on ART can detect HIV viruses that have the capacity to rebound following treatment interruption,” concludes senior author Nilu Goonetilleke, a faculty member at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
