The cientificWorldJOURNAL Clinical Study HIV-1 Replication in HIV-Infected Individuals Is Significantly Reduced When Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells Are Superinfected with HSV-1

Copyright © 2012 Taneth Yamsuwan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Herpes simplex virus (HSV) can cause generalized infection in human immunodeficiency virus- (HIV-) infected patients leading to death. This study investigated HSV-1 replication in PBMCs from 25 HIV-infected individuals and 15 healthy donors and the effects of HSV-1 superinfection on HIV-1 production. Herpes viral entry mediator (HVEM) receptor on T lymphocytes was also evaluated. Our results confirmed that the number of activated (CD3+ and CD38+) T lymphocytes in HIV-infected individuals (46.51 ± 17.54%) was significantly higher than in healthy donors (27.54 ± 14.12%, P value = 0.001) without any significant differences in HVEM expression. Even though the percentages of HSV-1 infected T lymphocytes between HIV-infected individuals (79.25 ± 14.63%) and healthy donors (80.76 ± 7.13%) were not different (P value = 0.922), yet HSV-1 production in HIV-infected individuals (47.34±11.14×103 PFU/ml) was significantly greater than that of healthy donors (34.17±8.48×103 PFU/ml, P value = 0.001). Moreover, HSV-1 virions were released extracellularly rather than being associated with the cells, and superinfection of HSV-1 at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 5 significantly decreased HIV production (P value < 0.001). 1