RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Influence of HIV-1 Subtype in the Response to Therapeutic Dendritic Cell Vaccine
Valéria Ferreira1, Patrícia Moura2, Sergio Crovella1, Ricardo Sobhie Diaz* , 3, Adauto Castelo Filho3, Ricardo Ximenes3, Luiz Cláudio Arraes3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 289
Last Page: 292
Publisher ID: TOAIDJ-6-289
DOI: 10.2174/1874613601206010289
Article History:
Received Date: 20/1/2012Revision Received Date: 10/6/2012
Acceptance Date: 12/6/2012
Electronic publication date: 14/12/2012
Collection year: 2012

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
In the present study, we investigated the influence of HIV-1 subtype in the response to the dendritic cell (DC) therapeutic vaccine for HIV. HIV-1 viral load and TCD8+/TCD4+ cell counts for up to 48 weeks after vaccination. Out of 19 immunized subjects, 13 were infected by subtype B, 5 by subtype F, and 1 by subtype D. Overall, 42.1% (8/19) achieved a viral load decline of ≥ 1 log10 sustained up to 48 weeks after immunization. Such magnitude of viral load drop was seen in 80% (4/5) of subtype F infected patients, and in 23.0% (3/13) of the subtype B infected ones (p=0.08). Moreover, mean viral load decline was 1.32 log10, for subtype F infected individuals compared to 0.5 log10 among subtype B infected patients (p=0.01). The variation in TCD4+ cell count was not related to HIV-1 subtype. Larger studies are necessary to confirm the efficacy of this immunotherapy and the differential response according to the background genetic diversity of HIV-1.