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Cutting Edge: Rapid Recovery of NKT Cells upon Institution of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy for HIV-1 Infection¹

Hans J. J. van der Vliet^2,*,, Marit G. A. van Vonderen^*, Johan W. Molling^,, Hetty J. Bontkes^,, Martine Reijm, Peter Reiss, Michiel A. van Agtmael^*, Sven A. Danner^*, Alfons J. M. van den Eertwegh, B. Mary E. von Blomberg and Rik J. Scheper^,

^* Department of Internal Medicine, Department of Medical Oncology, and Department of Pathology, Vrije Universiteit Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Department of Infectious Diseases, Tropical Medicine, and AIDS, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

CD1d-restricted NKT cells play important regulatory roles in various immune responses and are rapidly and selectively depleted upon infection with HIV-1. The cause of this selective depletion is incompletely understood, although it is in part due to the high susceptibility of CD4⁺ NKT cells to direct infection and subsequent cell death by HIV-1. Here, we demonstrate that highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) results in the rapid recovery of predominantly CD4^– NKT cells with kinetics that are strikingly similar to those of mainstream T cells. As it is well known that the early recovery of mainstream T cells in response to HAART is due to their redistribution from tissues to the circulation, our data suggest that the selective depletion of circulating NKT cells is likely due to a combination of cell death and tissue sequestration and indicates that HAART can improve immune functions by reconstituting both conventional T cells and immunoregulatory NKT cells.

The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

¹ This work was supported by a Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research TALENT Grant and Grant 920-03-142 and by a Dutch Cancer Society Academic Grant and Grant VU2002-2607.

² Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Hans J. J. van der Vliet, Department of Internal Medicine, Vrije Universiteit Medisch Centrum, De Boelelaan 1117, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail address: jj.vandervliet{at}vumc.nl

³ Abbreviations used in this paper: HAART, highly active antiretroviral therapy; -GalCer, -galactosylceramide.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				H. van der Vliet, H. Koon, and M. Exley Effects of Interleukin-2 Treatment on CD1d-Restricted Natural Killer T Cells Clin. Cancer Res., July 15, 2007; 13(14): 4311 - 4311. [Full Text] [PDF]