The HIV-1 reservoir in eight patients on long-term suppressive antiretroviral therapy is stable with few genetic changes over time.

The source and dynamics of persistent HIV-1 during long-term combinational antiretroviral therapy (cART) are critical to understanding the barriers to curing HIV-1 infection. To address this issue, we isolated and genetically characterized HIV-1 DNA from naïve and memory T cells from peripheral blood and gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) from eight patients after 4-12 y of suppressive cART. Our detailed analysis of these eight patients indicates that persistent HIV-1 in peripheral blood and GALT is found primarily in memory CD4(+) T cells [CD45RO(+)/CD27((+/-))].

Hematopoietic precursor cells isolated from patients on long-term suppressive HIV therapy did not contain HIV-1 DNA.

Background: We address the key emerging question of whether Lin(-)/CD34(+) hematopoietic precursor cells (HPCs) represent an important latent reservoir of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) during long-term suppressive therapy.

Methods: To estimate the frequency of HIV-1 infection in bone marrow, we sorted Lin(-)/CD34(+) HPCs and 3 other cell types (Lin(-)/CD34(-), Lin(-)/CD4(+), and Lin(+)/CD4(+)) from 8 patients who had undetectable viral loads for 3-12 years. Using a single-proviral sequencing method, we extracted, amplified, and sequenced multiple single HIV-1 DNA molecules from these cells and memory CD4(+) T cells from contemporaneous peripheral blood samples.