Assessment of cytokine values in serum by RT-PCR in HIV-1 infected individuals with and without highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART)

a cross-sectional study was performed on hiv-1 infected individuals with or without antiretroviral treatment (arv) in the aids day hospital, botucatu medical school, unesp. between august 2004 and october 2005, 73 hiv-1 infected individuals were divided into three groups: infected individuals with or without aids who had never received arv (g1 = 15); patients on haart that had had plasma hiv-1 rna viral load (vl) equal to or greater than 50 copies/ml (g2 = 27); and patients on haart with undetectable vl for at least the past six months (g3 = 31). there was also an additional group that comprised blood donors without any sign of the disease and with negative hiv serum tests (g4 = 20), which was the control group. serum cytokine levels (values in pg/ml) were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa) and specific mrna expression by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr). both techniques were performed on the four groups for tnf-α, il-2, inf-γ, il-4 and il-10. all patients were submitted to vl determination and cd4+ and cd8+t lymphocyte counts. the analysis of the results revealed a significant comparison among groups for both methods and an association between the latter (> 80% r2 > 0.80). there was only one exception, in control individuals for il-2 by elisa. the cytokine profiles, in both methods, for the three patient groups, were mature th-0. the behaviors of il-2 and inf-γ required emphasis due to consequent expression of dominant th profile. both methods showed low il-2 and high mean values of inf-γ in the three groups. several authors have recently drawn attention to the substantial apoptosis of infected and non-infected cd4+t cells, mainly during primary infection, persisting only in those with inf-γ phenotype producer and not il-2. hiv infected individuals submitted to haart are expected to produce il-2 in an attempt to present th-1 profile, but in most cases this did not occur.