CCR5-restricted HIV type 2 variants from long-term aviremic individuals are less sensitive to inhibition by β-chemokines than low pathogenic HIV type 1 variants

Many HIV-2-infected individuals maintain low, often undetectable, viral loads for prolonged periods. Virus and/or host factors that contribute to this high level of virus control are largely unknown. Previously we demonstrated that HIV-2 variants from long-term aviremic individuals have relatively low replication kinetics in vitro in comparison to HIV-1 variants. We hypothesized that the relatively low replication rates of HIV-2 in vitro as well as the high level of virus control in vivo might be explained by HIV-2 replication being more sensitive to inhibitory host factors like β-chemokines or other CD8+T cell-derived factors than HIV-1 replication. To test this we determined the effect of exogenously added β-chemokines and healthy donor CD8+T cells on the in vitro virus production of HIV-2 and HIV-1 variants from long-term nonprogressors (LTNPs). Contrary to expectations, HIV-2 replication was inhibited less efficiently by RANTES and MIP-1α than HIV-1 replication. CD8+T cells from 8 of 12 healthy donors reduced HIV replication minimally 2-fold. Interestingly, cells from five of these donors inhibited HIV-1 but hardly affected HIV-2 replication, while the reverse was observed for cells from one donor. For HIV-1, but not HIV-2, the magnitude of the antiviral effect of CD8+T cells correlated with their effect on RANTES levels in culture supernatants. Our findings indicate that RANTES is a more important factor of CD8+T cell-associated anti-HIV-1 activity than it is of HIV-2 activity and that the benign clinical course of HIV-2 infection is not due to enhanced β-chemokine sensitivity of HIV-2 variants.

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