Stephen W Wietgrefe, Jodi Anderson, Lijie Duan, Peter J Southern, Paul Zuck, Guoxin Wu, Bonnie J Howell, Cavan Reilly, Eugène Kroon, Suthat Chottanapund, Supranee Buranapraditkun, Carlo Sacdalan, Nicha Tulmethakaan, Donn J Colby, Nitiya Chomchey, Peeriya Prueksakaew, Suteeraporn Pinyakorn, Rapee Trichavaroj, Julie L Mitchell, Lydie Trautmann, Denise C Hsu, Sandhya Vasan, Sopark Manasnayakorn, Mark de Souza, Sodsai Tovanabutra, Alexandra Schuetz, Merlin L Robb, Nittaya Phanuphak, Jintanat Ananworanich, Timothy W Schacker, Ashley T Haase
Productively infected cells are generally thought to arise by HIV infection of activated CD4+ T cells, and these infected activated cells are also thought to be a recurring source of latently infected cells when a portion of the population transitions to a resting state. We discovered and report here that productively and latently infected cells can instead originate by direct infection of resting CD4+ T cell populations in lymphoid tissues in Fiebig I, the earliest stage of detectable HIV infection. We found that direct infection of resting CD4+ T cells was correlated with the availability of susceptible target cells in lymphoid tissues restricted to resting CD4+ T cells and expression of pTEFb in these resting cells to enable productive infection, and we documented persistence of HIV producing resting T cells during ART...
September 21, 2023: Journal of Clinical Investigation