Use of Well-Defined HIV-Derived Epitopes to Evaluate CD4+and CD8+T Cell Responses in Patients with Chronic HIV-1 Infection Treated with HAART

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Abstract
Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is associated with a dramatic clinical benefit to HIV-infected patients through significant plasma viremia reduction and CD4+ T cells increase. In previous reports, HIV-specific CD4+ and/or CD8+ T cell responses have been studied separately during HAART; therefore the relationship between these two virus-specific populations is currently not well understood. In this study, both HIV-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses were investigated using a large panel of well-defined T cell epitope peptides in 24 HIV-1-infected patients undergoing HAART, with undetectable viral load and CD4+ T cell count ≥ 350/mm3. One-third of the patients had CD4+ T cells able to proliferate when exposed to HIV-1 protein fragments but only two patients displayed polyclonal responses. In addition the majority (78%) of HAART-treated patients displayed no or monospecific CD8+ T cell responses and the phenotypic analysis of these HIV-specific CD8+ T cells demonstrated the absence of terminally differentiated effectors. In conclusion, the experimental approach used in this study shows that CD4+ T cell responses may persist during HAART but are not associated with strong CD8+ T cell responses

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