Blunted Response to Combination Antiretroviral Therapy in HIV Elite Controllers: An International HIV Controller Collaboration

Faroudy Boufassa (1, 2) , Jérôme Lechenadec (1) , Laurence Meyer (2, 1, 3) , Dominique Costagliola (4, 5) , Peter W Hunt (6) , Florencia Pereyra (7) , Steve Deeks (6) , Gianfranco Pancino (8) , Olivier Taulera (9) , Mathias Lichterfeld (10) , Pierre Delobel (5, 11) , Asier Saez-Cirion (5) , Olivier Lambotte (12)

1 UP11 - Université Paris-Sud - Paris 11
2 CESP - Centre de recherche en épidémiologie et santé des populations
3 Service de santé publique [CHU Bicêtre]
4 UPMC - Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6
5 INSERM - Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale
6 UC San Francisco - University of California [San Francisco]
7 MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
8 Régulation des Infections Rétrovirales
9 Hôpital Saint-Louis
10 Massachusetts General Hospital [Boston]
11 Service Maladies infectieuses et tropicales [CHU Toulouse]
12 Service de médecine interne et maladies infectieuses

Objective HIV “elite controllers” (ECs) spontaneously control viral load, but some eventually require combination antiretroviral treatment (cART), due to a loss of viral control or a decline in CD4 T-cell counts. Here we studied the CD4 T-cell count dynamics after cART initiation among 34 ECs followed in U.S. and European cohorts, by comparison with chronically viremic patients (VIRs). Methods ECs were defined as patients with at least ≥5 viral load (VL) measurements below 400 copies/mL during at least a 5-year period despite never receiving ART and were selected from the French ANRS CO18 cohort, the U.S. SCOPE cohort, the International HIV Controllers study and the European CASCADE collaboration. VIRs were selected from the ANRS COPANA cohort of recently-diagnosed (<1 year) ART-naïve HIV-1-infected adults. CD4 T-cell count dynamics after cART initiation in both groups were modelled with piecewise mixed linear models. Results After cART initiation, CD4 T-cell counts showed a biphasic rise in VIRs with: an initial rapid increase during the first 3 months (+0.63/month), followed by +0.19/month. This first rapid phase was not observed in ECs, in whom the CD4Tc count increased steadily, at a rate similar to that of the second phase observed in VIRs. After cART initiation at a CD4 T-cell count of 300/mm3, the estimated mean CD4 T-cell gain during the first 12 months was 139/mm3 in VIRs and 80/mm3 in ECs (p = 0.048). Conclusions cART increases CD4 T-cell counts in elite controllers, albeit less markedly than in other patients.

Domaines: Virologie

Faroudy Boufassa, Jérôme Lechenadec, Laurence Meyer, Dominique Costagliola, Peter W Hunt, et al.. Blunted Response to Combination Antiretroviral Therapy in HIV Elite Controllers: An International HIV Controller Collaboration. PLoS ONE, 2014, 9 (1), pp.e85516. ⟨10.1371/journal.pone.0085516⟩. ⟨hal-01344809⟩