Suslov KV. Transient immunosuppression during short interruption of HAART: Another key to HIV cure in the "Berlin patient"?
Med Hypotheses 2018;
123:6-8. [PMID:
30696593 DOI:
10.1016/j.mehy.2018.12.002]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/02/2018] [Accepted: 12/06/2018] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
Transient immunosuppression in lentiviral infections leads to an auto-vaccination followed by the rise of serum neutralizing activity and a significant decrease in a set-point viral load, which becomes undetectable in some cases. Arguably, in the "Berlin patient" (Hütter G, et al., N Engl J Med, 2009) an induction chemotherapy-mediated transient immunosuppression episode during short interruption of HAART might have led to at least a "functional cure" before allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Neutralization-enhancing RF antibodies (NeRFa) induced as a part of secondary immune response after transient immunosuppression may have played a key role in neutralization of infectious HIV-IgG complexes in extracellular reservoirs. Transient immunosuppression during short non-structured treatment interruption (TI-SNSTI/HAART) regimen would be promising for the achievement of HIV cure on a large scale.
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