Mechanisms of HIV non-progression; robust and sustained CD4+ T-cell proliferative responses to p24 antigen correlate with control of viraemia and lack of disease progression after long-term transfusion-acquired HIV-1 infection

Dyer, Wayne B; Zaunders, John J; Yuan, Fang Fang; Wang, Bin; Learmont, Jennifer C; Geczy, Andrew F; Saksena, Nitin K; McPhee, Dale A; Gorry, Paul R; Sullivan, John S

A strong but narrow CTL response may eventually fail to control viral replication. Restricted recognition of only one A3 and two B27 Gag epitopes in C13 appeared sufficient to have contained viraemia for many years, but the most recent viral load result (Figure 1 ) suggested that immune escape from these B27-restricted CTL may have occurred recently. Similarly, the predominant response by C122 against an immunodominant B27 epitope ( Figure 5 and 6) may have contained earlier spikes of increased viraemia, but ultimately failed to contain increasing viral replication in later years ( Figure 2 ).