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CD4+ T-cell depletion in HIV infection: Are we closer to understanding the cause?

Nature Medicine volume 8, pages 319–323 (2002)Cite this article

Is CD4+ cell depletion due to rapid elimination by HIV and failure of the immune system to replace these cells at the required rate? Increasing evidence suggests that this is not the case, and that infection-induced immune activation drives both viral replication and CD4+ cell depletion.

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Figure 1: Regenerative proliferation and transient clonal expansion contribute to T cell turnover.
Figure 2: Progressive depletion of resting T cells is depicted as a shifting steady state.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Angelika Meier-Schellersheim for preparing the figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Zvi Grossman

  2. Laboratory of Immunology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    Zvi Grossman, Martin Meier-Schellersheim & William E. Paul

  3. Institute of Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon, Portugal

    Ana E. Sousa & Rui M.M. Victorino

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Grossman, Z., Meier-Schellersheim, M., Sousa, A. et al. CD4+ T-cell depletion in HIV infection: Are we closer to understanding the cause?. Nat Med 8, 319–323 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0402-319

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