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Journal of Virology, October 2000, p. 9222-9233, Vol. 74, No. 19
Department of
Medicine1 and Department of
Pharmacology,2 Division of Infectious
Diseases, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, and Laboratory of Immunology, Institute of Tropical
Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium3
Received 3 May 2000/Accepted 7 July 2000
This study was designed to examine the impact of human
immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) fitness on disease progression through the use of a dual competition/heteroduplex tracking assay (HTA). Despite numerous studies on the impact of HIV-1 diversity and
HIV-specific immune response on disease progression, we still do not
have a firm understanding of the long-term pathogenesis of this virus.
Strong and early CD8-positive cytotoxic T-cell and CD4-positive
T-helper cell responses directed toward HIV-infected cells appear to
curb HIV pathogenesis. However, the rate at which the virus infects the
CD4+ T-cell population and possibly destroys the
HIV-specific immune response may also alter the rate of disease
progression. For HIV-1 fitness studies, we established conditions for
dual HIV-1 infections of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and
a sensitive HTA to measure relative virus production. A pairwise
comparison was then performed to estimate the relative fitness of
various non-syncytium-inducing/CCR5-tropic (NSI/R5) and
syncytium-inducing/CXCR4-tropic (SI/X4) HIV-1 isolates. Four HIV-1
strains (two NSI/R5 and two SI/X4) with moderate ex vivo fitness were
then selected as controls and competed against primary HIV-1 isolates
from an HIV-infected Belgian cohort. HIV-1 isolates from long-term
survivors (LTS) were outcompeted by control strains and were
significantly less fit than HIV-1 isolates from patients with
accelerated progression to AIDS (PRO). In addition, NSI/R5 HIV-1
isolates from PRO overgrew control SI/X4 strains, suggesting that not
all SI/X4 HIV-1 isolates replicate more efficiently than all NSI/R5
isolates. Finally, there were strong, independent correlations between
viral load and the total relative fitness values of HIV-1 isolates from
PRO (r = 0.84, P = 0.033) and LTS (r = 0.86, P = 0.028). Separation of
the PRO and LTS plots suggest that HIV-1 fitness together with viral
load may be a strong predictor for the rate of disease progression.
0022-538X/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
A Dual Infection/Competition Assay Shows a Correlation between
Ex Vivo Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Fitness and
Disease Progression
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Division of
Infectious Diseases, BRB 1029, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH 44106. Phone: (216) 368-8904. Fax: (216)
368-2034. E-mail: eja3{at}po.cwru.edu.
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