: Dear immuno/HIV netters,
: I know that In vivo there has not been any evidence of HIV infection of CD8+ve
: cells. These are the results from Dr Levy's lab who couldn't isolate HIV
: genome from CD8 cells of HIV-infected individuals using PCR. Also it is known
: that CD8+ve cells isolated from HIV-infected individuals die in vitro together
: with CD4+cells by apoptosis after activation.
: My 1st question is 1) Do you believe that CD8+ve cells are infectable by HIV?
: 2) How is it that they die by apoptosis [ especially if they are not
: infected]?
: Are CD8 cells dependant on cytokine factors for viability which may be
: abnormal due to infection of T-helper and macrophages?
: Please post so that everybody can get involved.
: Cheers
: --
: Shahram Mori.
: We recently discussed the paper in journal club (I'mnot sure if this is
: the one your are referring to)concerning HIV-mediated apoptosis of cells
: in human thymic xenografts in scid mice. In those mice it appeared most
: if not all thymic subpopulations were infected. This is not really my
: area, but does HIV normally access the thymus? If iit does, can it
: infect DP thymocytes (via CD4)? Finally,if that were to occur, after
: selection on class I, wouldn't you have a lot of infected CD8's floating
: around?
: Bill
HIV has access to the Lymphoid tissue and therefore the Thymus. But I didn't
know that HIV could infect CTL's. I thought the dysfunctionality of CTL's
was due to the aberrations in communication of Th/MPhages with CTL's as caused
by HIV. But I can definitely see that at the stage of double+ve cells HIV
can infect the progenitor CD8 cells. But I would guess that this occurs at
low numbers because HIV tends to infect activated cells rather than
resting T-cells right? Can all the immunologists jump in here please?
Cheers
--
Shahram Mori _/\_
Program in Molecular Biology _\ /_
Dept. of chemistry and Biochemistry Box 3C \_ _/
NMSU Las Cruces NM ||
88003
