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Journal of Virology, September 2005, p. 12100-12105, Vol. 79, No. 18
0022-538X/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JVI.79.18.12100-12105.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Unique Acquisition of Cytotoxic T-Lymphocyte Escape Mutants in Infant Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Infection
Thillagavathie Pillay,1
Hua-Tang Zhang,1
Jan W. Drijfhout,2
Nicola Robinson,1
Helen Brown,1
Munira Khan,3
Jagadesa Moodley,3
Miriam Adhikari,4
Katja Pfafferott,1
Margaret E. Feeney,5
Anne St. John,6
Edward C. Holmes,7
Hoosen M. Coovadia,8
Paul Klenerman,1
Philip J. R. Goulder,1 and
Rodney E. Phillips1*
The Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research and Nuffield Department of Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, United Kingdom,1
Department of Immunohaematology, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands,2
Nelson R. Mandela Medical School, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa,3
Nelson R. Mandela Medical School, Department of Paediatrics and Infant Health, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa,4
Partners AIDS Research Center and Infectious Disease Division, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts,5
Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Bridgetown, Barbados,6
Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom,7
Centre for HIV and AIDS Networking, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa8
Received 27 January 2005/
Accepted 24 May 2005

ABSTRACT
The role of cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) escape in rapidly progressive
infant human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection
is undefined. The data presented here demonstrate that infant
HIV-1-specific CTL can select for viral escape variants very
early in life. These variants, furthermore, may be selected
specifically in the infant, despite the same CTL specificity
being present in the mother. Additionally, pediatric CTL activity
may be compromised both by the transmission of maternal escape
variants and by mother-to-child transmission of escape variants
that originally arose in the father. The unique acquisition
of these CTL escape forms may help to explain the severe nature
of some pediatric HIV infections.

TEXT
In developing countries, one-third of human immunodeficiency
virus type 1 (HIV-1)-infected children have rapidly progressive
disease and die in infancy (
23). It is unknown why infants have
particularly poor control of HIV-1 (
5,
6,
8,
9). Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte
(CTL) responses can control adult HIV-1 and simian immunodeficiency
virus infections (
12,
18,
20) but select for CTL escape mutations
with a subsequent loss of immune control (
2,
11,
14,
19). Few
studies have described CTL in early perinatal HIV-1 (
3,
17).
However, it is unclear whether rapid progression in infants
occurs in association with an undetectable HIV-specific CTL
response or with an ineffective HIV-specific CTL response (
21).
This distinction is of relevance to pediatric HIV vaccine design
strategies. Here we provide evidence that very early in the
first year of life, CTL drive the selection of de novo escape
variants, which together with mother-to-child transmission of
viruses preadapted to the HLA class I alleles expressed in the
infant, are likely to contribute to a lack of immune control
in pediatric infection.
We studied five rapidly progressing infants and their mothers from Durban, South Africa, from pregnancy to up to 1.5 years after birth (see Table S1 in the supplemental material). Three of the five infants died with HIV-1 disease within 3 to 23 months. A fourth infant commenced antiretroviral therapy at 1 year of age after the onset of AIDS. The fifth infant was withdrawn from the study by his guardians following the AIDS-related death of his mother.
To assess infant immunity-driven viral evolution, we examined HIV-1 viral genes encoding the most immunogenic viral proteins (1), Gag and Nef. gag and nef were sequenced from plasma RNAs collected from infants and mothers from pregnancy onwards. Phylogenetic analysis (22) confirmed the relatedness of clones from mother-child pairs, all of which clustered with clade C viruses (see Fig. S1 in the supplemental material).
At six epitopes from three infants, we identified de novo CTL escape (Table 1; see Table S2 in the supplemental material). Using the method of CODEML selection analysis as previously described (7), four of these antigenic sites were shown to be under positive selection in these infants (Table 1) (dn/ds > 1; P < 0.05). Maximum likelihood phylogenetic analysis indicated that in each case, the CTL escape variant had evolved subsequently in the infant (Fig. 1 and data not shown). No variation was observed at these sites in >50 clones from each mother sampled across different time points. This observation, together with phylogenetic evidence, suggests that the CTL escape viruses had arisen in the infants.
We next examined epitopes presented by alleles shared by mother
and child to determine whether escape variants could be specifically
selected in rapidly progressing infants. An analysis of
nef from infant I4 demonstrated the selection of a Pro-to-Ser or
-Gln change at position 2 of the HLA-B*4201 epitope, T
PGPGVRYPL,
between 10 and 26 weeks postpartum (Table
1; Fig.
2a). These
variant peptides generated specifically in the infant were not
recognized (Fig.
2b) and did not bind to HLA-B*4201 (Fig.
2c).
These CTL escape mutants driven by selection pressure in the
infant were absent from the B*4201-positive mother, in spite
of the presence of the same TL10-specific CTL response in the
mother (Fig.
2d). The combination of a consistent high-frequency
TL10-specific response and a persistent high maternal viral
load of >100,000 HIV RNA copies/ml of plasma suggests that
this particular response was ineffective (
4,
24), whereas the
same response in the infant "drove" the evolution of the escape
variants early on in the infection. These data demonstrate that,
at least for certain epitopes, selection for escape may operate
during early pediatric HIV infection but may be absent from
chronic adult infections.
It has previously been shown that children may be in a particularly
disadvantaged position with respect to the epitopes available
for an effective HIV-specific CTL response as a result of mother-to-child
transmission of a virus that has adapted successfully to the
maternal class I alleles (
10,
15). Since infants typically share
50% of their HLA class I alleles with their mothers, it might
be predicted that the remaining 50% of the infant's HLA alleles
that are paternally inherited could be utilized more successfully
to mount responses against maternally transmitted virus. However,
in some cases, the maternal HIV infection may result from the
transmission of virus from the child's father. To examine the
question of whether viruses adapted to paternal HLA alleles
may in this way be indirectly transmitted to the child via the
mother, we sought "footprints" of paternal HLA alleles in viruses
transmitted from mother to child. Previous studies of
gag sequences
from HLA-B*57-positive subjects have identified "footprints"
of HLA-B*57 which persist following transmission to B57-negative
subjects (
16). In particular, these arise at Gag residues 219
(H219Q) and 248. For clade B infections, the characteristic
B*57 footprint is G248A, whereas for clade C infections, the
B57 footprint at this site is A248T (
P = 0.036) (
16). The occurrence
of such HLA-B*57-associated polymorphisms in the HLA-B*57-negative
mother M5 (Fig.
3a) is thus indicative of the transmission of
virus from an HLA-B*57-positive subject to the mother (
P = 0.008)
(
16). Since child I5 had HLA-B*57, one may speculate that the
HLA-B*57-positive father in this instance directly transmitted
a virus carrying these HLA-B*57-associated mutations to the
HLA-B*57-negative mother, M5. These B*57 "footprints" persisting
in the mother were, in turn, transmitted to the HLA-B*57-positive
child. In this example, the transmitted variant A248T did not
affect binding to HLA-B*57, and thus a TW10 response (and further
immune pressure on the virus) could be generated by the child.
The transmission of an escape variant unable to bind to the
HLA molecule would have precluded a response in the infant.
One example of mother-to-child transmission of such a variant
has been described for the B27-KK10 epitope, where Arg is required
for binding to B27 (
10,
11). We identified another example of
this in a Barbadian mother-child pair (Fig.
3b), but with HLA-B27
being shared by the mother and child. In this instance, the
presence of the B27 footprint R264X in the virus of the B27-negative
father and a sequence analysis demonstrating the shared phylogeny
of the paternal and maternal viruses (Fig.
3c) indicated that
in this case, transmission of the virus occurred from mother
to father. Analyses of these and other families show that HIV
infection in one parent not infrequently is the result of transmission
by the other parent (Fig.
3c), and thus the acquisition of a
virus adapted to paternal and maternal HLA alleles may occur
in the infant via mother-to-child transmission.
These data show that there are several unique influences that
may compromise the effectiveness of the early pediatric HIV-specific
immune response that involve CTL escape. These include the transmission
of escape variants generated in the mother and also those originally
generated in the father and the early development of escape
mutations in epitopes at which selection for escape does not
necessarily occur in adult infections. The occurrence of de
novo escape during early pediatric infections implies, on the
one hand, a suboptimal immune response akin to the development
of drug-resistant mutations in the presence of suboptimal antiretroviral
therapy. On the other hand, the presence of functional CTL generated
against HIV in early infancy suggests the possibility that early
immunomodulatory interventions may have promise to improve the
efficacy of these CTL responses and bring about more successful
HIV-specific control of pediatric infections in the future.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: University of Oxford, The Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research, OX1 3SY Oxford, United Kingdom. Phone: 44-1865-281880. Fax: 44-1865-281890. E-mail:
rodney.phillips{at}ndm.ox.ac.uk.

Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jvi.asm.org/. 

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Journal of Virology, September 2005, p. 12100-12105, Vol. 79, No. 18
0022-538X/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JVI.79.18.12100-12105.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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