Divergent Cytokine and Chemokine Responses at Early Acute Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Infection Correlated with Virus Replication and CD4 T Cell Loss in a Rhesus Macaque Model

Nongthombam Boby; Apurv Srivastav; Sudesh K Srivastav; Bapi Pahar

doi:10.3390/vaccines11020264

Divergent Cytokine and Chemokine Responses at Early Acute Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Infection Correlated with Virus Replication and CD4 T Cell Loss in a Rhesus Macaque Model

Vaccines (Basel). 2023 Jan 25;11(2):264. doi: 10.3390/vaccines11020264.

Authors

Nongthombam Boby¹, Apurv Srivastav², Sudesh K Srivastav³, Bapi Pahar^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Division of Comparative Pathology, Tulane National Primate Research Center, Covington, LA 70433, USA.
² Department of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis, CA 95816, USA.
³ Department of Biostatistics and Data Science, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA.
⁴ School of Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA.

Abstract

Cytokine and chemokine levels remain one of the significant predictive factors of HIV pathogenesis and disease outcome. Understanding the impact of cytokines and chemokines during early acute infection will help to recognize critical changes during HIV pathogenesis and might assist in establishing improved HIV treatment and prevention methods. Sixty-one cytokines and chemokines were evaluated in the plasma of an SIV-infected rhesus macaque model. A substantial change in 11 cytokines/growth factors and 9 chemokines were observed during acute infection. Almost all the cytokines/chemokines were below the baseline values for an initial couple of days of infection. We detected six important cytokines/chemokines, such as IL-18, IP-10, FLT3L, MCP-1, MCP-2, and MIP-3β, that can be used as biomarkers to predict the peripheral CD4+ T cell loss and increased viral replication during the acute SIV/HIV infection. Hence, regulating IL-18, IP-10, FLT3L, MCP-1, MCP-2, and MIP-3β expression might provide an antiviral response to combat acute SIV/HIV infection.

Keywords: SIV; acute infection; chemokines; cytokines; peripheral blood; rhesus macaque.

Grants and funding

R01DK109883/National Institutes of Health