Nature Medicine
5, 512 - 517 (1999)
doi:10.1038/8394
Latent infection of CD4+ T cells provides a mechanism for lifelong persistence of HIV-1, even in patients on effective combination therapyDiana Finzi1, Joel Blankson1, Janet D. Siliciano1, Joseph B. Margolick2, Karen Chadwick2, Theodore Pierson1, Kendall Smith3, Julianna Lisziewicz4, Franco Lori4, Charles Flexner1, Thomas C. Quinn1, 5, Richard E. Chaisson1, Eric Rosenberg6, Bruce Walker6, Stephen Gange7, Joel Gallant1
& Robert F. Siliciano11
Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore Maryland 21205, USA
2
Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore Maryland 21205, USA
3
Department of Medicine, Cornell University Medical College, New York, New York 10021, USA
4
RIGHT and Georgetown University, Washington DC 20007, USA
5
National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, Bethesda Maryland 20892, USA
6
Partners AIDS Research Center and Infectious Disease Division,
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Charleston, Massachusetts 02129, USA
7
Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore Maryland 21205, USA
Correspondence should be addressed to Robert F. Siliciano Combination therapy for HIV-1 infection can reduce plasma virus to undetectable levels, indicating that prolonged treatment might eradicate the infection. However, HIV-1 can persist in a latent form in resting CD4+ T cells. We measured the decay rate of this latent reservoir in 34 treated adults whose plasma virus levels were undetectable. The mean half-life of the latent reservoir was very long (43.9 months). If the latent reservoir consists of only 1  105 cells, eradication could take as long as 60 years. Thus, latent infection of resting CD4+ T cells provides a mechanism for lifelong persistence of HIV-1, even in patients on effective anti-retroviral therapy.
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