No effect of pegylated interferon-alpha on total HIV-1 DNA load in HIV-1/HCV coinfected patients. Journal of Infectious Diseases
Strouvelle, Braun et al. aimed to examine the effect of pegylated interferon-alpha (pIFN-α) treatment in reducing total HIV-1 DNA levels in 40 HIV-1/hepatitis C virus (HCV-) coinfected patients from the Swiss HIV Cohort Study and the Zurich Primary HIV Infection Study. Unique to other studies, they included patients from 3 groups: (1) HIV-1 chronic; (2) HIV-1 acute (both stratified according to time to initiation of ART after HIV-1 infection); and (3) a no-ART HIV-1–infected group.
Total HIV-1 DNA was quantified in 247 samples with a mean number of time points (range) per patient of 6.6 (2-12), 5.6 (2-10), and 5.7 (3-9) in the chronic, acute, and no-ART groups, respectively. In no-ART patients, pIFN-α treatment decreased the HIV-1 RNA viral load by 0.8 log10 on average. Pre-pIFN-α HIV-1 DNA levels were on average 0.66 log higher in the chronic versus the acute group. Total HIV-1 DNA levels remained stable before, during, and after pIFN-α treatment in all three groups.
In conclusion, the study did not reveal any effect of pIFN-α on the latent reservoir as measured by total HIV-1 DNA in PBMCs. The study-results question the benefit of pIFN-α as an immunotherapeutic agent for reducing the HIV-1 latent reservoir.