Cellular Metabolism Is a Major Determinant of HIV-1 Reservoir Seeding in CD4 T Cells and Offers an Opportunity to Tackle Infection.

HIV persists in long-lived infected cells that are not affected by antiretroviral treatment. These HIV reservoirs are mainly located in CD4 T cells, but their distribution is variable in the different subsets. Susceptibility to HIV-1 increases with CD4 T cell differentiation. We evaluated whether the metabolic programming that supports the differentiation and function of CD4 T cells affected their susceptibility to HIV-1. We found that differences in HIV-1 susceptibility between naive and more differentiated subsets were associated with the metabolic activity of the cells. Indeed, HIV-1 selectively infected CD4 T cells with high oxidative phosphorylation and glycolysis, independent of their activation phenotype. Moreover, partial inhibition of glycolysis (1) impaired HIV-1 infection in vitro in all CD4 T cell subsets, (2) decreased the viability of preinfected cells, and (3) precluded HIV-1 amplification in cells from HIV-infected individuals. Our results elucidate the link between cell metabolism and HIV-1 infection and identify a vulnerability in tackling HIV reservoirs.