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