Thymic plasmacytoid dendritic cells are susceptible to productive HIV-1 infection and efficiently transfer R5 HIV-1 to thymocytes in vitro

摘要

BackgroundHIV-1 infection of the thymus contributes to the defective regeneration and loss of CD4⁺ T cells in HIV-1-infected individuals. As thymic dendritic cells (DC) are permissive to infection by HIV-1, we examined the ability of thymic DC to enhance infection of thymocytes which may contribute to the overall depletion of CD4⁺ T cells. We compared productive infection in isolated human thymic and blood CD11c⁺ myeloid DC (mDC) and CD123⁺ plasmacytoid DC (pDC) using enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) CCR5 (R5)-tropic NL(AD8) and CXCR4 (X4)-tropic NL4-3 HIV-1 reporter viruses. Transfer of productive HIV-1 infection from thymic mDC and pDC was determined by culturing these DC subsets either alone or with sorted thymocytes.