{"id":6668,"date":"2002-09-11T20:21:33","date_gmt":"2002-09-11T19:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moomango.co.uk\/htb\/?p=6668"},"modified":"2014-06-04T10:18:10","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T10:18:10","slug":"red-blood-cells-new-sensitive-markers-for-hiv-disease-progression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/6668","title":{"rendered":"Red blood cells new sensitive markers for HIV disease progression?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Erythrocytes are an important extracellular reservoir of HIV-1 and quantification of this viral pool may help judge suppression of HIV-1 replication in patients with undetectable plasma viral loads, say researchers in The Lancet.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Failure of current antiretroviral therapies to completely suppress viral replication presents a major obstacle to eradication of the HIV-1 virus. This barrier remains in place, despite reduction of HIV-1 plasma RNA concentrations to levels below the limit of currently available detection systems in many patients. A number of different cell types are known to act as reservoirs or carriers for the virus, prompting calls for the design of targeted drugs.<\/p>\n<p>Reports that erythrocytes bind HIV-1 immune complexes in vitro prompted Christopher Hess, of University Hospital Basel and colleagues to look for a circulating pool of virus associated with red blood cells in people with HIV-1 infection. They tested the plasma, white cells and erythrocytes from 82 chronically HIV-infected individuals using RT-PCR, and found that the HIV-1 virus was associated with erythrocytes in 80 of these patients.<\/p>\n<p>In 23 of the patients tested, erythrocyte-associated HIV-1 was detected despite the fact that plasma HIV-1 RNA had previously been undetectable by standard methods (&lt; 20 copies\/ml) for up to 32 months. Up to 82 878 HIV-1 RNA copies were detected per ml of blood in the corresponding erythrocyte samples.<\/p>\n<p>Confirmation of the association between HIV-1 and this group of cells could lead to a new method for judging the suppression of HIV-1 replication in individuals with low virus levels, the authors suggest. The finding that higher numbers of HIV-1-associated erythrocytes correlated with a history of advanced clinical stages of the infection suggests that quantification of this viral pool could be used as a sensitive method for monitoring disease progression.<\/p>\n<p>Reference:<\/p>\n<p>Hess C, Klimkait T, Schlapbach L et al. Association of a pool of HIV-1 with erythrocytes in vivo: a cohort study. Lancet 2002 Jun 29;359(9325):2230-4<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80\/entrez\/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&amp;db=PubMed&amp;list_uids=12103286&amp;dopt=Abstract\">http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80\/entrez\/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&amp;db=PubMed&amp;list_uids=12103286&amp;dopt=Abstract<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Erythrocytes are an important extracellular reservoir of HIV-1 and quantification of this viral pool may help judge suppression of HIV-1 replication in patients with undetectable plasma viral loads, say researchers in The Lancet. Failure of current antiretroviral therapies to completely &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basic-science-and-immunology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}