Efficient isolation of HIV from plasma during different stages of HIV infection

✍ Scribed by Dr. Anneka Ehrnst; A. Sönnerborg; S. Bergdahl; Ö. Strannegård

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 625 KB
• Volume: 26
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0146-6615
• DOI: 10.1002/jmv.1890260105

✦ Synopsis

Attempts to isolate human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from blood plasma using inoculation of pellets from ultracentrifuged samples into cultures of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) resulted in a high overall recovery rate (75%) of the virus from 76 patients in various stages of HIV infection. The recovery rate was dependent on the stage of infection; in patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) it was 100%, in AIDS-related complex (ARC) 86%, in persistent generalized lymphadenopathy (PGL) 64%, and in asymptomatic patients 54%. The HIV isolation rates compared favorably with those obtained after cocultivation of patient and target PBMC (overall recovery rate 67%). HIV was isolated from plasma but not from PBMC in 8 cases, whereas the reverse was true in 3 of 71 simultaneously tested cases. Isolation from plasma was found to be superior to detection of serum p24 antigen for the demonstration of HIV (positivity rates 75% and 30%, respectively). The time to appearance of p24 antigen in cultures inoculated with HIV-containing plasma samples was inversely related to the presence of detectable p24 antigen in serum. There was a significantly shorter time to culture positivity of plasma samples from AIDS and ARC patients than from PGL and asymptomatic patients. These results suggested that there is a progressive increase in the concentrations of infectious HIV in plasma from the asymptomatic to the AIDS stage. HIV isolation from plasma samples is a reliable means of demonstrating HIV viremia and has obvious advantages over the more commonly used cocultivation procedures. The frequent occurrence of cell-free, infectious HIV in plasma suggests that the majority of HIV-infected patients have a relative lack of functional neutralizing antibodies against the virus, at least during the late stages of disease.