Treatment with integrase inhibitor suggests a new interpretation of HIV RNA decay curves that reveals a subset of cells with slow integration
[2];
[4];
[1];
[5];
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- The Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD (United States)
- Univ. of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, PA (United States)
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (United States)
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Univ. de Lisboa, Lisboa (Portugal)
- Vaccine Research Center (United States)
The kinetics of HIV-1 decay under treatment depends on the class of antiretrovirals used. Mathematical models are useful to interpret the different profiles, providing quantitative information about the kinetics of virus replication and the cell populations contributing to viral decay. We modeled proviral integration in short- and long-lived infected cells to compare viral kinetics under treatment with and without the integrase inhibitor raltegravir (RAL). We fitted the model to data obtained from participants treated with RAL-containing regimes or with a four-drug regimen of protease and reverse transcriptase inhibitors. Our model explains the existence and quantifies the three phases of HIV-1 RNA decay in RAL-based regimens vs. the two phases observed in therapies without RAL. Our findings indicate that HIV-1 infection is mostly sustained by short-lived infected cells with fast integration and a short viral production period, and by long-lived infected cells with slow integration but an equally short viral production period. We propose that these cells represent activated and resting infected CD4+ T-cells, respectively, and estimate that infection of resting cells represent ~4% of productive reverse transcription events in chronic infection. RAL reveals the kinetics of proviral integration, showing that in short-lived cells the pre-integration population has a half-life of ~7 hours, whereas in long-lived cells this half-life is ~6 weeks. We also show that the efficacy of RAL can be estimated by the difference in viral load at the start of the second phase in protocols with and without RAL. Altogether, we provide a mechanistic model of viral infection that parsimoniously explains the kinetics of viral load decline under multiple classes of antiretrovirals.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- National Institutes of Health (NIH); USDOE
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1398914
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-16-27244
- Journal Information:
- PLoS Pathogens, Vol. 13, Issue 7; ISSN 1553-7374
- Publisher:
- Public Library of ScienceCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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