HIV in Tears Despite ART? |
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Written by Alain Lafeuillade | ||||||||||||||||||
Tuesday, 30 August 2011 00:00 | ||||||||||||||||||
HIV in Tears Despite ART?
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3TC/AZT/NVP | 7 |
3TC/AZT/EFV | 3 |
3TC/D4T/EFV | 2 |
3TC/D4T/NVP | 2 |
3TC/DDI/NVP | 1 |
AZT/DDI/NVP | 1 |
D4T/DDI/NVP | 1 |
3TC/AZT/LPVr | 1 |
3TC/DDI/LPVr | 1 |
AL: You concluded that precautions should be taken when doing eye examinations. How can you tell that this HIV RNA is infectious?
TL: We cannot verify the HIV RNA in tear is infectious or if living HIV particles are present in this kind of study. However, commercial viral load kit and quality PCR assay confirmed existence of HIV RNA or RNA fragment in tear, even in the presence of successful plasma viral load suppression in patients. Consequently, we suggested the necessity of taking precautions when operating on eyes.
AL: How do you explain your results and how are you trying to go further?
TL: We think it is very interesting findings. The results provide the possibility that lacrimal glands and/or other tear-associated tissues are a new reservoir for HIV. Therefore, our research team is trying to duplicate virus and isolate viral genomic full-length sequence by viral culture in PBMC or cell line.
Reference
Han Y, Wu N, Zhu W et al. Detection of HIV-1 viruses in tears of patients even under long-term highly active antiretroviral therapy. AIDS 2011, Epub ahead of print.



These results might be interesting, but authors must verify the real infectivity of HIV using cell culture methods [i.e. co-cultivation of biological samples in permissive cell lines (H9, C8166 and so on)].
The characterizatio n of HIV strains (type and subtype) might add important information.
Waiting these results… sincerely
Maria Carla Re
Maria Carla Re
Professor of Microbiology
Microbiology Unit
Retrovirus Laboratory
University of Bologna
Bologna - Italy
phone ++39.051 4290 900
mobile ++39.349-6129 380