Functional impairment of central memory CD4 T cells is a potential early prognostic marker for changing viral load in SHIV-infected rhesus macaques

In HIV infection there is a paucity of literature about the degree of immune dysfunction to potentially correlate and/or predict disease progression relative to CD4⁺ T cells count or viral load. We assessed functional characteristics of memory T cells subsets as potential prognostic markers for changing viral loads and/or disease progression using the SHIV-infected rhesus macaque model. Relative to long-term non-progressors with low/undetectable viral loads, those with chronic plasma viremia, but clinically healthy, exhibited significantly lower numbers and functional impairment of CD4⁺ T cells, but not CD8⁺ T cells, in terms of IL-2 production by central memory subset in response to PMA and ionomycine (PMA+I) stimulation. Highly viremic animals showed impaired cytokine-production by all T cells subsets. These results suggest that functional impairment of CD4⁺ T cells in general, and of central memory subset in particular, may be a potential indicator/predictor of chronic infection with immune dysfunction, which could be assayed relatively easily using non-specific PMA+I stimulation.