High-fat-diet induced obesity and diabetes mellitus in Th1 and Th2 biased mice strains: A brief overview and hypothesis.

Obesity and diabetes mellitus are common metabolic diseases prevalent worldwide. Mice are commonly used to study the pathogenesis of these two conditions. Obesity and diabetes mellitus are induced by administering a high-fat diet in many studies although other diet-induced models are also used.

IL-8 Alterations in HIV-1 Infected Children With Disease Progression.

Disease progression in HIV-1 infected children is faster than in adults. Less than 5% of the infected children maintain stable CD4 counts beyond 7 years of infection and are termed long-term nonprogressors (LTNPs). Delineating the host immune response in antiretroviral naïve (ART) and treated HIV-1 infected children at different disease stages will help in understanding the immunopathogenesis of the disease.

Mutations in the reverse transcriptase and protease genes of human immunodeficiency virus-1 from antiretroviral naïve and treated pediatric patients.

The success of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is challenged by the emergence of resistance-associated mutations in human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1). In this study, resistance associated mutations in the reverse transcriptase (RT) and protease (PR) genes in antiretroviral therapy (ART) naïve and treated HIV-1 infected pediatric patients from North India were evaluated. Genotyping was successfully performed in 46 patients (30 ART naive and 16 treated) for the RT gene and in 53 patients (27 ART naive and 26 treated) for PR gene and mutations were identified using Stanford HIV Drug Resistance Database.

A novel strategy for efficient production of anti-V3 human scFvs against HIV-1 clade C.

Background: Production of human monoclonal antibodies that exhibit broadly neutralizing activity is needed for preventing HIV-1 infection, however only a few such antibodies have been generated till date. Isolation of antibodies by the hybridoma technology is a cumbersome process with fewer yields. Further, the loss of unstable or slowly growing clones which may have unique binding specificities often occurs during cloning and propagation and the strongly positive clones are often lost.

Neutralization potential of the plasma of HIV-1 infected Indian patients in the context of anti-V3 antibody content and antiretroviral therapy. [corrected].

We assessed the anti-V3 antibody content and viral neutralization potential of the plasma of 63 HIV-1-infected patients (antiretroviral naïve=39, treated=24) against four primary isolates (PIs) of clade C and a tier 1 clade B isolate SF162. Depletion and inhibition of anti-V3 antibodies in the plasma of five patients with high titers of anti-V3 antibodies led to modest change in the neutralization percentage against two PIs (range 0-21%). The plasma of antiretroviral-treated patients exhibited higher neutralization potential than that of the drug-naïve plasmas against the four PIs tested which was further evidenced by a follow-up study.

Diversity of HIV type 1 envelope (V3-V5) sequence in HIV type 1-infected Indian children.

Abstract We assessed the viral envelope (V3-V5 region) sequence diversity from 13 HIV-1-infected Indian children from north India. All of the 13 children were found to be infected with subtype C viruses. One of the viral sequences exhibited usage of the CXCR4 coreceptor predicted by Web PSSM and Geno2pheno tools.