Development of a chronically catheterized maternal‐fetal macaque model to study in utero mother‐to‐fetus HIV transmission: A preliminary report

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Abstract
The lack of a representative animal model that permits frequent in utero fetal blood sampling is a major limiting factor for the study of maternal‐fetal HIV transmission. Therefore, we have developed a maternal‐fetal virus infection model using chronically catheterized macaques to simultaneously study the time‐course of viral infection in the mother and the response of the fetus to maternal HIV infection. Pregnant macaques were infected with 103 infectious units of HIV‐2287; every 3 days blood samples from both the mother and the fetus as well as amniotic fluid samples were collected. We found a varying degree of peak and time‐to‐peak virus load, virus‐infected PBMCs, and free virus (determined by QC‐RNA‐PCR method) in maternal blood. Two of the three mothers with more than 108 copies of viral RNA/ml of plasma at peak viremia transmitted the virus to their fetuses at about 14 days post‐infection. As observed with HIV‐2287 infected mothers, virus‐infected fetuses also produced a rapid rate of CD4+ cell decline in utero.