A recently published study shows that HIV viruses detected during episodic blips following interleukin-7 administration are similar to the viruses present before and after IL-7 therapy. This is bad news for eradication trials planning to use IL-7 to purge HIV reservoirs.
Toulon, France, December 09, 2010 — Since the in vitro work of Roger Pomerantz group in 2005, IL-7 is considered as a cytokine able to reactivate HIV in silent HIV reservoirs. Trials are ongoing or planned, which combine potent anti-retroviral combinations and IL-7 to flush out the HIV reservoir.
An informative study just published in AIDS shows that the low level viremia induced by IL-7 likely reflects predominantly transient induction or release of virus from a preexisting pool rather than activation of silent quasispecies.
The viruses detected at the times of episodic HIV viremia were derived from the same sources giving rise to viruses in plasma before and after recombinant human IL-7 therapy, and it is likely that recombinant human IL-7 is inducing a transient viral burst primarily by amplifying virus present before IL-7 therapy, rather than inducing production from previously silent reservoirs.
In this article, we discuss the potent implication of these findings on the future of HIV eradication trials.
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