Presence of specific anti HIV-1 immunoglobulins associated to erythrocytes

MARIA NOÉ GARCIA; ROBERTO DANIEL RABINOVICH; NILDA SCHVACHSA; MARIA MERCEDES AVILA

Toronto, Canada

Conferencia; XVI International AIDS Conference; 2006

International AIDS Society

Background: HIV-1 associated with erythrocytes can be found even in patients with undetectable plasma viral load. The aim was to determine the importance of specific antibodies associated to erythrocytes in infected patients.Methods: Erythrocytes from 37 HIV positive individuals with HIV-RNA plasma levels 500,000 cp/ml, were obtained by Dextran sedimentation. Antibodies were separated by means of glycin-ClH pH 3.2 from an aliquot of the erythrocytes. Specific antibodies were detected by Western Blot (WB).Viral adsorption to erythrocytes of a second aliquot was assayed by incubating HXB2 virus (60 pg/ml of p24 antigen) at 37º C for 30 minutes. Presence of p24 in the supernatant was measured. Fisher exact test was used.Results: Specific immunoglobulins were detected in erythrocytes of 21/37 patients. The most frequent bands observed by WB were p24 in 14/37 and gp160 in 14/37. Specific HIV antibodies were significantly less detected among patients with undetectable viral load (3/17) than among those with viral loads >50 cp/ml (14/20) (p