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Evolutionary pattern of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) replication and distribution in lymph nodes following primary infection: Implications for antiviral therapy

Nature Medicine volume 4, pages 341–345 (1998)Cite this article

Evolutionary patterns of virus replication and distribution in lymphoid tissue during the early phases of HIV infection have not been delineated. Lymph node (LN) biopsies were excised from patients at different times after the estimated time of primary infection. Within 3 months of the acute viral syndrome, HIV was mostly present in individual virus-expressing cells in LNs; trapping of virions in the follicular dendritic cell (FDC) network was minimal or absent, but was the predominant form of HIV detected in LNs of subjects with chronic infection, either recent (4–20 months after primary infection) or long-term (>2–3 years after primary infection). Plasma viremia was significantly higher in patients during the first 3 months than in those recently infected; however, there were no significant differences in the number of virus-expressing cells per square millimeter of LN tissue in these two groups. Numbers of virus-expressing cells in lymphoid tissue were significantly lower in the subjects with long-term infection than in the other two groups. Therefore, during the transition from primary to chronic HIV infection, the level of HIV replication in lymphoid tissue remains elevated despite the fact that viremia is significantly downregulated. These findings have implications for therapeutic strategies in primary HIV infection and in recent seroconvertors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. laboratory of AIDS Immunopathogenesis, Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Centre Hospitalier Vadois (CHUV), 1011, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Giuseppe Pantaleo, Cecilia Graziosi & G. Paolo Rizzardi

  2. laboratory of Immunoremulation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Building 10, Room 11N210, MSC 1880, Bethesda, Maryland, 20892-1880, USA

    Oren J. Cohen, Mauro Vaccarezza & Anthony S. Fauci

  3. Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota, 516 Delaware Street S.E., Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455, USA

    Timothy Schacker

  4. San Francisco General Hospital, School of Medicine, UCSF, 995 Potrero Avenue, San Francisco, California, 94110, USA

    James Kahn

  5. Molecular Histology, Inc., 18536 Office Park Drive, Gaithersburg, Maryland, 20879, USA

    Cecil H. Fox

  6. Division of AIDS, (NIAID), Solar Building, Rooom 2C22, 6003 Executive Boulevard, MSC 7620, Rockville, Maryland, 20892-7620, USA

    Steven M. Schnittman

  7. Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, Maryland, 21205-2179, USA

    David H. Schwartz

  8. Virology Research Clinic, University of Washington, 1124 Columbia Street (M-115), Seattle, Washington, 98104, USA

    Lawrence Corey

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  1. Giuseppe Pantaleo
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  2. Oren J. Cohen
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  12. Anthony S. Fauci
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Pantaleo, G., Cohen, O., Schacker, T. et al. Evolutionary pattern of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) replication and distribution in lymph nodes following primary infection: Implications for antiviral therapy. Nat Med 4, 341–345 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0398-341

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