Comparison of the magnitudes of different functional HIV-specific CD8⁺ T cells between primary and early chronic phase of HIV infection.

<p>a. Gating scheme used for the identification of CD8⁺ T-cell responses. Data shown were from cells derived from one representative patient, stimulated with PMA and ionomycin. Initial gating was performed on lymphocytes in a forward scatter of FSC-A versus FSC-H, and then FSC vs SSC plot. CD3⁺ events were gated in the FSC versus CD3 plot prior to gating on CD3⁺CD8⁺ and CD3⁺CD4⁺ events. The resulting CD3⁺CD4^-CD8⁺ population was further gated based on positivity for each of 5 functional responses including IL-2, MIP-1β, CD107a, TNF-α and IFN-γ. b. The frequencies of five distinct functions (color coded as shown) in the total CD8⁺ T-cell response against the indicated HIV peptide mix (x-axis) within 55 HIV-infected MSM. c. Comparison of the magnitude of different functional HIV-specific CD8⁺ T cells between primary and early chronic infection groups. For simplicity, only significantly different populations were shown for Gag1, Gag2, Pol4, Pol5, Env2, Env3, Nef and Tat+Rev responses; no significant differences were identified for those functions not shown. The responses from 55 HIV-infected MSM were standardized so that the profiles could be compared irrespective of any frequency differences. Asterisks were placed above response pairs that were significantly different: ***p<0.001; **p<0.01 and *p<0.05. Each dot denoted a positive response for the function indicated at the bottom left. The box plots represented the 10th, 25th, 75th, and 90th percentiles.