Reservoirs of latent HIV can grow despite effective therapy, study shows
"We knew before that the reservoir is very long lived," says Robert Siliciano, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, "but what we didn't know was how the reservoir was maintained. Now it is clear that these cells aren't just sitting there but are dividing and replenishing themselves." A report on the new research, published March 24 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine , says resting CD4+ T cells not only make up the latent reservoir of HIV in those infected, but also have the potential to reactivate the production of active virus throughout the body. In the study, Siliciano and his team collected latently infected HIV cells from the blood of 12 patients with HIV on long-term antiretroviral therapy. After growing the CD4+ T cells in the laboratory, the investigators exposed them to four rounds of chemicals designed to stimulate cell division and proliferation. After each round of stimulation, th...