Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Artigo Acesso aberto Produção Nacional Revisado por pares

BIBTEX RIS

High levels of T lymphocyte activation in Leishmania-HIV-1 co-infected individuals despite low HIV viral load

2010; BioMed Central; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1186/1471-2334-10-358

1471-2334

Joanna Reis Santos-Oliveira, Carmem BW Giacoia-Gripp, Priscilla Alexandrino de Oliveira, Valdir Sabbaga Amato, José Ângelo Lauletta Lindoso, Hiro Goto, Manoel P. Oliveira-Neto, Marise S Mattos, Beatriz Grinsztejn, Mariza Gonçalves Morgado, Alda Maria Da‐Cruz,

Reproductive System and Pregnancy

Abstract Background Concomitant infections may influence HIV progression by causing chronic activation leading to decline in T-cell function. In the Americas, visceral (AVL) and tegumentary leishmaniasis (ATL) have emerged as important opportunistic infections in HIV-AIDS patients and both of those diseases have been implicated as potentially important co-factors in disease progression. We investigated whether leishmaniasis increases lymphocyte activation in HIV-1 co-infected patients. This might contribute to impaired cellular immune function. Methods To address this issue we analyzed CD4 + T absolute counts and the proportion of CD8 + T cells expressing CD38 in Leishmania /HIV co-infected patients that recovered after anti-leishmanial therapy. Results We found that, despite clinical remission of leishmaniasis, AVL co-infected patients presented a more severe immunossupression as suggested by CD4 + T cell counts under 200 cells/mm 3 , differing from ATL/HIV-AIDS cases that tends to show higher lymphocytes levels (over 350 cells/mm 3 ). Furthermore, five out of nine, AVL/HIV-AIDS presented low CD4 + T cell counts in spite of low or undetectable viral load. Expression of CD38 on CD8 + T lymphocytes was significantly higher in AVL or ATL/HIV-AIDS cases compared to HIV/AIDS patients without leishmaniasis or healthy subjects. Conclusions Leishmania infection can increase the degree of immune system activation in individuals concomitantly infected with HIV. In addition, AVL/HIV-AIDS patients can present low CD4 + T cell counts and higher proportion of activated T lymphocytes even when HIV viral load is suppressed under HAART. This fact can cause a misinterpretation of these laboratorial markers in co-infected patients.