T-Cell Subsets That Harbor Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) In Vivo: Implications for HIV Pathogenesis

ABSTRACT Identification of T-cell subsets that are infected in vivo is essential to understanding the pathogenesis of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease; however, this goal has been beset with technical challenges. Here, we used polychromatic flow cytometry to sort multiple T-cell subsets to 99.8% purity, followed by quantitative PCR to quantify HIV gag DNA directly ex vivo. We show that resting memory CD4+ T cells are the predominantly infected cells but that terminally differentiated memory CD4+ T cells contain 10-fold fewer copies of HIV DNA. Memory CD8+ T cells can also be infected upon upregulation of CD4; however, this is infrequent and HIV-specific CD8+ T cells are not infected preferentially. Naïve CD4+ T-cell infection is rare and principally confined to those peripheral T cells that have proliferated. Furthermore, the virus is essentially absent from naïve CD8+ T cells, suggesting that the thymus is not a major source of HIV-infected T cells in the periphery. These data illuminate the underlying mechanisms that distort T-cell homeostasis in HIV infection.