Efficacy and safety of three antiretroviral therapy regimens for treatment-naive African adults living with HIV-2 (FIT-2): a pilot, phase 2, non-comparative, open-label, randomised controlled trial.

Background: Due to the low number of individuals with HIV-2, no randomised trials of HIV-2 treatment have ever been done. We hypothesised that a non-comparative study describing the outcomes of several antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimens in parallel groups would improve understanding of how differences between HIV-1 and HIV-2 might lead to different therapeutic approaches.

Methods: This pilot, phase 2, non-comparative, open-label, randomised controlled trial was done in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, and Togo.

A Comparison of Cell Activation, Exhaustion, and Expression of HIV Coreceptors and Restriction Factors in HIV-1- and HIV-2-Infected Nonprogressors.

Human immunodeficiency viruses induce rare attenuated diseases due either to HIV-1 in the exceptional long-term nonprogressors (LTNPs) or to HIV-2 in West Africa. To better understand characteristics of these two disease types we performed a multiplex comparative analysis of cell activation, exhaustion, and expression of coreceptors and restriction factors in CD4 T cells susceptible to harbor those viruses. We analyzed by flow cytometry the expression of HLA-DR, PD1, CCR5, CXCR6, SAMHD1, Blimp-1, and TRIM5α on CD4 T cell subsets from 10 HIV-1 LTNPs and 14 HIV-2 (12 nonprogressors and 2 progressors) of the ANRS CO-15 and CO-5 cohorts, respectively, and 12 HIV healthy donors (HD).

Conventional Dendritic Cells and Slan Monocytes During HIV-2 Infection.

HIV-2 infection is characterized by low viremia and slow disease progression as compared to HIV-1 infection. Circulating CD14CD16 monocytes were found to accumulate and CD11c conventional dendritic cells (cDC) to be depleted in a Portuguese cohort of people living with HIV-2 (PLWHIV-2), compared to blood bank healthy donors (HD). We studied more precisely classical monocytes; CD16 inflammatory (intermediate, non-classical and slan monocytes, known to accumulate during viremic HIV-1 infection); cDC1, important for cross-presentation, and cDC2, both depleted during HIV-1 infection.

Limited HIV-2 reservoirs in central-memory CD4 T-cells associated to CXCR6 co-receptor expression in attenuated HIV-2 infection.

The low pathogenicity and replicative potential of HIV-2 are still poorly understood. We investigated whether HIV-2 reservoirs might follow the peculiar distribution reported in models of attenuated HIV-1/SIV infections, i.e.