The role of naive T-cells in the pathogenesis of T-cell decline and long-term persistence of HIV infection.

The overall goal of this project is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the role of naive T-cells in the pathogenesis of T-cell decline and long-term persistence of HIV infection. The study aims to determine the origin of HIV infected naive T-cells in vivo by assessing the viral relatedness between HIV strains from naive and memory CD4 T-cells. Furthermore the question of whether infection of naive CD4 T-cells is a productive infection will be assessed by investigating the degree of diversity between the sequences obtained from the naive T-cells. To do this we will be studying ten chronically infected individuals. Naive and memory CD4 T-cells from these individuals will be purified using a Magnetic Activated Cell Sorting (MACS) strategy. Envelope sequences from these cell subsets and from plasma will then be isolated and subjected to diversity calculation. This is a cross-sectional study.