Important note: Information in this article was accurate in February 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, February 8, 1999
Daniel J. DeNoon, Senior Editor
T. Zhu and colleagues at the University of Washington have found HIV lurking in the resting T cells of some people who remain HIV seronegative All 37 of members of the study cohort continue to test negative for HIV despite repeated high-risk sexual activity with their HIV infected partners.
"This is the first demonstration that latent HIV-1 infection can occur without subsequent seroconversion," Zhu reported in a presentation to the 6th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, held January 31-February 4, 1999, in Chicago, Illinois.
The researchers consistently detected HIV env, gag, and pol gene sequences in resting T cells from the exposed seronegative individuals over a two-year study period (1996-1998). They had their results checked in different laboratories at different time points to rule out contamination with reagents and cross contamination between samples.
Of extraordinary interest was the finding that the HIV gene sequences from these individuals did not vary over time. Virus from only one study member had sequence variations, and these were small. Such genetic constancy could not occur if HIV were replicating normally, as the virus is notoriously prone to spin off viable mutants known as quasispecies.
"HIV-1 did not replicate or replicated at extremely low level in most exposed seronegatives, which resulted in sequence identity in cells from 1996 to 1998," Zhu observed.
Because the virus remained virtually unchanged, Zhu and colleagues concluded that the individuals had not been infected with other strains of HIV-1, even though they continued to have unprotected high- risk sex.
The implications of the findings could be immense. Is there a population of seronegative individuals who believe themselves to be uninfected but in whom normal HIV replication may one day break out? Can these people infect others? Or are they effectively vaccinated against HIV?
It will be of urgent interest to AIDS vaccine research to discover how these individuals manage to keep their HIV infection in a latent state that seems to protect them despite a lack of antibodies.
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