Department of Immunology, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011;6(5):e19607. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019607. Epub 2011 May 13.
In HIV infection there is a paucity of literature about the degree of immune dysfunction to potentially correlate and/or predict disease progression relative to CD4(+) T cells count or viral load. We assessed functional characteristics of memory T cells subsets as potential prognostic markers for changing viral loads and/or disease progression using the SHIV-infected rhesus macaque model. Relative to long-term non-progressors with low/undetectable viral loads, those with chronic plasma viremia, but clinically healthy, exhibited significantly lower numbers and functional impairment of CD4(+) T cells, but not CD8(+) T cells, in terms of IL-2 production by central memory subset in response to PMA and ionomycine (PMA+I) stimulation. Highly viremic animals showed impaired cytokine-production by all T cells subsets. These results suggest that functional impairment of CD4(+) T cells in general, and of central memory subset in particular, may be a potential indicator/predictor of chronic infection with immune dysfunction, which could be assayed relatively easily using non-specific PMA+I stimulation.
在 HIV 感染中，关于免疫功能障碍的程度的文献很少，无法将其与 CD4(+) T 细胞计数或病毒载量相关联和/或预测疾病进展。我们使用感染 SHIV 的恒河猴模型评估了记忆 T 细胞亚群的功能特征，作为改变病毒载量和/或疾病进展的潜在预后标志物。与长期低/无法检测到病毒载量的非进展者相比，那些具有慢性血浆病毒血症但临床健康的患者表现出显著较低数量和功能障碍的 CD4(+) T 细胞，而不是 CD8(+) T 细胞，在对 PMA 和离子霉素 (PMA+I) 刺激的中央记忆亚群中产生 IL-2。高病毒血症动物的所有 T 细胞亚群的细胞因子产生受损。这些结果表明，CD4(+) T 细胞的功能障碍，特别是中央记忆亚群的功能障碍，可能是慢性免疫功能障碍感染的潜在指标/预测因子，使用非特异性 PMA+I 刺激可以相对容易地检测到。
