1. Human Endogenous Retrovirus Expression Is Inversely Associated with Chronic Immune Activation in HIV-1 Infection.
- Author
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Ormsby, Christopher E., Sengupta, Devi, Tandon, Ravi, Deeks, Steven G., Martin, Jeffrey N., Jones, R. Brad, Ostrowski, Mario A., Garrison, Keith E., Vázquez-Pérez, Joel A., Reyes-Terán, Gustavo, Nixon, Douglas F., and Boasso, Adriano
- Subjects
HUMAN endogenous retroviruses ,RETROVIRUS diseases ,ANTIBODY diversity ,GENOMES ,AUTOIMMUNE diseases ,CANCER ,HIV infections - Abstract
Human endogenous retroviruses (HERV) are remnants of ancestral retroviral infections integrated into the germ line, and constitute approximately 8% of the genome. Several autoimmune disorders, malignancies, and infectious diseases such as HIV-1 are associated with higher HERV expression. The degree to which HERV expression in vivo results in persistent inflammation is not known. We studied the association of immune activation and HERV-K expression in 20 subjects with chronic, untreated progressive HIV-1 infection and 10 HIV-1 negative controls. The mean HERV-K gag and env RNA expression level in the HIV-1 infected cohort was higher than in the control group (p = 0.0003), and was negatively correlated with the frequency of activated CD38+HLA-DR+CD4+ T cells (Rho = 20.61; p = 0.01) and activated CD38+HLA-DR+CD8+ T cells (Rho = 20.51; p = 0.03). Although HIV- infected persons had higher levels of HERV-K RNA expression (as expected), the level of RNA expression was negatively associated with level of T cell activation. The mechanism for this unexpected association remains to be defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
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