Interactions between ?-herpesviruses and human immunodeficiency virus in vivo: Evidence for increased human immunodeficiency viral load in the presence of human herpesvirus 6

✍ Scribed by Emery, Vincent C.; Atkins, Mark C.; Bowen, E. Frances; Clark, Duncan A.; Johnson, Margaret A.; Kidd, I. Michael; McLaughlin, James E.; Phillips, Andrew N.; Strappe, Padraig M.; Griffiths, Paul D.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 100 KB
• Volume: 57
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0146-6615
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-9071(199903)57:3<278::aid-jmv11>3.0.co;2-3

✦ Synopsis

In vitro, beta-herpesviruses can stimulate or inhibit HIV replication under particular circumstances. In order to investigate the effects of beta-herpesvirus infection on HIV replication and vice versa at an organ level, we determined the quantitative relationships between cytomegalovirus (CMV), human herpesviruses (HHV) 6 and 7, and HIV-1 proviral DNA using quantitative competitive PCR methods in 141 organs collected at autopsy from 11 AIDS patients. The presence of HHV-6 DNA in an organ was significantly associated with elevated HIV-1 proviral DNA (difference in HIV median loads, 1.3 log10 genomes; P = 0.004). Consistent with this, there was a trend for the presence of HIV-1 proviral DNA to be associated with an elevated HHV-6 load (0.44 log10 difference; P = 0.07). In contrast, there were no significant differences between viral loads in the combinations of either CMV or HHV-7 with HIV-1 proviral DNA load. Pairwise combinations of the beta-herpesviruses revealed that the quantity of HHV-7 was increased in the presence of HHV-6 (difference in median loads, 1.3 log10; P = 0.001) and the quantity of HHV-6 was increased in the presence of HHV-7 (difference in median loads, 0.7 log10; P=0.002). These results demonstrate that the presence of HHV-6 in an organ is significantly associated with an elevated HIV-1 proviral load and have implications for understanding HIV pathogenesis in the human host and the role that beta-herpesviruses, especially HHV-6, might play as cofactors in the HIV disease process.