Frequency and Absolute Number of FoxP3+ Regulatory T Cells Correlate with Disease Progression of Chronic HIV-1 Infection / 中国病毒学·英文版

ABSTRACT

CD4+CD25+ Regulatory T cells (Treg) have been found to down-regulate immune activation in HIV-1 infection. However, whether the depletion of Treg benefits to the disease status of HIV infection remains undefined. To address this issue, we enumerated the Treg absolute counts and frequency in 75 antiviral-na(i)ve HIV-1-infected individuals in this study. It was found that HIV-infected patients displayed a significant decline in Treg absolute counts but a significant increase in Treg frequency. In addition, with disease progression indicated by CD4 T-cell absolute counts, circulating Treg frequency gradually increased; while Treg absolute counts were gradually decreased, suggesting that the alteration of Treg number closely correlated with disease progression in HIV infection.Functional analysis further showed that Treg efficiently inhibit both CD4 and CD8 T cell proliferation in vitro. Thus, our findings indicates that Treg actively participate in pathogenesis of chronic HIV infection,influencing the disease progression.