Important note: Information in this article was accurate in December 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, December 24 & 31, 2001
Michael Greer, Senior Medical Writer
NewsRx -- African sex workers who become resistant to HIV infection can develop antibodies that target the virus in vaginal fluid, researchers say.
Prof. Laurent Belec and colleagues at INSERM Unit 430 at Broussais Hospital, Pierre and Marie Curie University, and Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris, France, Project RETRO-CI and the National Program for the Fight Against AIDS in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia investigated antibody activity in persistently seronegative sex workers.
Some of these women demonstrated strong and compartmentalized HIV specific humoral responses, Belec and coauthors reported.
The researchers examined 342 African sex workers who remained HIV-negative despite extensive exposure to the virus. HIV specific antibodies made up of immunoglobulin A (IgA), IgG, and IgM were found in cervicovaginal secretions (CVSs) from 7.5% of the women studied, as were elevated levels of the antiviral chemokine RANTES, they said.
Purified CVS antibodies prevented cell-associated HIV from traveling through cultured epithelial monolayers via transcytosis. The CVS antibodies targeted the HIV proteins gp160 and p24, study data showed.
These antibodies were found in CVSs with no trace of semen, indicating a local secretory response (Cervicovaginal secretory antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) that block viral transcytosis through tight epithelial barriers in highly exposed HIV-1-seronegative African women, Journal of Infectious Diseases, December 2001;184(11):1412-1422).
"These findings suggest that genital resistance to HIV may involve HIV specific cervicovaginal antibody responses in a minority of highly exposed HIV seronegative women in association with other protecting factors, such as local production of HIV suppressive chemokines," Belec and coworkers concluded.
The corresponding author for this report is Prof. Laurent Belec, Laboratoire de Virologie, Hopital Europeen Georges Pompidou, 75 908 Paris, Cedex 15, France. E-mail: laurent.belec@egp.ap-hop-paris.fr.
Key points reported in this study include:
This article was prepared by AIDS Weekly editors from staff and other reports.
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