HIV/hepatitis C coinfected patients have lower IL-7 levels, may explain blunted CD4 response to HIV therapy

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HIV-positive individuals who are coinfected with hepatitis C virus have lower plasmatic levels of interleukin-7 (IL-7), according to Spanish research published in the January 11th edition of AIDS. The investigators suggest that this may help explain why HIV/hepatitis C coinfected patients have a blunted CD4 cell response to anti-HIV therapy.

Their cross-sectional study involved both HIV-positive individuals who were naive to potent antiretroviral therapy and patients who were undergoing HIV therapy.

A total of 97 treatment-naive patients, 40 of whom were coinfected, were included in their analysis. Of these naive patients, data on thymic output were available for 20 coinfected patients and 25 HIV-monoinfected individuals. The treatment-experienced population consisted of 92 patients. All had an undetectable HIV viral load and 49 were coinfected. Of the treatment-experienced patients, 24 coinfected individuals had data on thymic function available for analysis, as did 29 patients who were only infected with HIV.

Glossary

naive

In HIV, an individual who is ‘treatment naive’ has never taken anti-HIV treatment before.

treatment-experienced

A person who has previously taken treatment for a condition. Treatment-experienced people may have taken several different regimens before and may have a strain of HIV that is resistant to multiple drug classes.

treatment-naive

A person who has never taken treatment for a condition.

fibrosis

Thickening and scarring of connective tissue. Often refers to fibrosis of the liver, which can be caused by an inflammatory reaction to long-term hepatitis infection. See also ‘cirrhosis’, which is more severe scarring.

cross-sectional study

A ‘snapshot’ study in which information is collected on people at one point in time. See also ‘longitudinal’.

IL-7 levels were significantly lower in coinfected treatment-naive (p = 0.004) and coinfected treatment-experienced patients (p =

When the investigators looked at the results of liver biopsies from coinfected patients, they found that patients with lower IL-7 tended to have higher fibrosis scores. “Increasing the number of patients would give significance to this difference”, they note.

“In our study, we found a correlation between IL-7 levels and the CD4 cell count in HIV-HCV co-infected patients on HAART, supporting the theory that HCV coinfection may alter IL-7 levels”, write the investigators.

References

Soriano-Sarabia N et al. HIV-hepatitis C virus co-infection is associated with decreased plasmatic IL-7 levels. AIDS 21: 253 - 255, 2007.