• Decay Rates of Cell-Associated HIV RNA & DNA in Acute Seroconverters Treated with HAART for more than 18 Months
  Poster 805
  Authored by B. Hoen, I. Garrigue, B. Dumon, M. Harzic, C. Lascoux, H. Fleury, D. Séréni

After the initiation of antiretroviral therapy, the levels of HIV RNA decrease rapidly and dramatically in a matter of weeks. In spite of that fact, the virus remains latent in a pool of latently infected memory cells. The half life of this pool is rather long, and the time estimated that it will take to eradicate this pool of cells spontaneously (while on fully suppressive therapy) varies between 10 and 60 years.

The authors wanted to know if it would be useful to monitor the HIV-1 proviral DNA in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells of the patients, and use this proviral DNA as a marker of the number of latently-infected cells. They followed 26 patients with early infection for 18 months after treatment with HAART and observed a very slow decay in the copy number of this HIV proviral DNA, in spite of complete suppression of the viral replication of HIV in the plasma. This integrated provirus could serve as a source of reactivation of the infection after discontinuation therapy. Other strategies will be needed to try to decrease the half life of this pool of cells (see poster 1165 by Saavedra.)