CD4+ CCR5+ T-Cell Dynamics during Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Infection of Chinese Rhesus Macaques

Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection of rhesus macaques (RMs) provides a reliable model to study the relationship between lentivirus replication, cellular immune responses, and CD4 + T-cell dynamics. Here we investigated, using SIVmac251-infected RMs of a Chinese genetic background (which experience a slower disease progression than Indian RMs), the dynamics of CD4 + CCR5 + T cells, as this subset of memory/activated CD4 + T cells is both a preferential target of virus replication and a marker of immune activation. As expected, we observed that the number of circulating CD4 + CCR5 + T cells decreases transiently at the time of peak viremia. However, at 60 days postinfection, i.e., when set-point viremia is established, the level of CD4 + CCR5 + T cells was increased compared to the baseline level. Interestingly, this increase correlated with faster disease progression, higher plasma viremia, and early loss of CD4 + T-cell function, as measured by CD4 + T-cell count, the fraction of memory CD4 + T cells, and the recall response to purified protein derivative. Taken together, these data show a key difference between the dynamics of the CD4 + CCR5 + T-cell pool (and its relationship with disease progression) in Chinese RMs and those described in previous reports for Indian SIVmac251-infected RMs. As the SIV-associated changes in the CD4 + CCR5 + T-cell pool reflect the opposing forces of SIV replication (which reduces this cellular pool) and immune activation (which increases it), our data suggest that in SIV-infected Chinese RMs the impact of immune activation is more prominent than that of virus replication in determining the size of the pool of CD4 + CCR5 + T cells in the periphery. As progression of HIV infection in humans also is associated with a relative expansion of the level of CD4 + CCR5 + T cells, we propose that SIV infection of Chinese RMs is a very valuable and important animal model for understanding the pathogenesis of human immunodeficiency virus infection.