Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med., Vol 152, No. 1, Jul 1995, 254-259.
Quantitative culture of HIV-1 from bronchoalveolar lavage cells
P Pinkston, N Pelletier, C Arena, J Schock, R Garland and RM Rose
Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, New England Deaconess Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
Determination of the infectious virus burden at the organ level is critical
for understanding the pathophysiology of human immunodeficiency virus type
1 (HIV-1) infection. To evaluate the burden of HIV-1 in the lung,
quantitative cultures were performed on bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) cells
from 11 HIV-1 seropositive subjects without respiratory infections and
compared with peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) obtained from the
same subjects. Fifty percent (50%) of subjects had positive BAL cell
cultures while 82% had positive PBMC cultures. There was much less virus
cultured from BAL cells than from PBMCs, whether using phytohemagglutinin
(PHA)-stimulated peripheral blood lymphocyte (PBL) targets (p < 0.05) or
adherent monocyte targets (p < 0.02). There was no significant
difference between the HIV-1 titers obtained for BAL cells whether using
PHA- stimulated PBL or adherent monocyte targets (p = 0.13). These studies
demonstrate that BAL cell cultures for HIV-1 in subjects without
respiratory infections are less frequently positive than PBMC cultures,
that less virus can be recovered from BAL cells than from PBMC, and that
HIV-1 isolates from BAL cells replicate in both PHA-stimulated PBL targets
and adherent monocyte targets. Quantitative assessment of virus burden in
the lung is important for future studies of HIV-1 pathogenesis and for
evaluating potential antiretroviral therapies aimed at altering the natural
history of organ dysfunction associated with retroviral replication.
