Prospective monitoring reveals dynamic levels of T cell immunity to Mycobacterium tuberculosis in HIV infected individuals.

Journal article

Monitoring of latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection may prevent disease. We tested an ESAT-6 and CFP-10-specific IFN-(Gamma) Elispot assay (RD1-Elispot) on 163 HIV-infected individuals living in a TB-endemic setting. An RD1-Elispot was performed every 3 months for a period of 3-21 months. 62% of RD1-Elispot negative individuals were positive by cultured Elispot. Fluctuations in T cell response were observed with rates of change ranging from -150 to +153 spot-forming cells (SFC)/200,000 PBMC in a 3-month period. To validate these responses we used an RD1-specific real time quantitative PCR assay for monokine-induced by IFN-(Gamma)(MIG) and IFN-(Gamma) inducible protein-10 (IP10) (MIG: r=0.6527, p=0.0114; IP-10: r=0.6967, p=0.0056; IP-10+MIG: r=0.7055, p=0.0048). During follow-up 30 individuals were placed on ARVs and 4 progressed to active TB. Fluctuations in SFC did not correlate with CD4 count, viral load, treatment initiation, or progression to active TB. The RD1-Elispot appears to have limited value in this setting.

Authors: Mitchell, J; Chetty, S; Govender, P; Pillay, M; Jaggernath, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Journal: PloS one
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 6
• Article number: e37920
• Publication date: 2012-01-01
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0037920
• EISSN: 1932-6203
• ISSN: 1932-6203
• Language: English
• Keywords: Prospective Studies; Tuberculosis; Chemokine CXCL10; Limit of Detection; Humans; T-Lymphocytes; Viral Load; HIV; Chemokine CXCL9; Coinfection; CD4 Lymphocyte Count; Time Factors; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; Enzyme-Linked Immunospot Assay; Reproducibility of Results; Mycobacterium tuberculosis; HIV Infections