Humoral immunity to HIV-1 in children (Paperback)

HIV-1 infection in children is an important public health problem. Unlike adults, they get infected at the time of their birth itself. This leads to severe infection in children. There is a paucity of studies on the immune responses elicited against HIV-1 in children. This study conducted on naive and treated HIV-1 infected children from north India revealed the heterologous viral neutralization potential of the plasma of these patients. Higher viral neutralization potential was observed in patients on antiretroviral therapy as compared to naive patients, while the plasma antibodies to the immunogenic regions of the viral envelope were lesser in the treated patients. The viruses infecting the patients included in this study belonged to clade C as identified by the sequencing of a segment of HIV-1 envelope gene. Patients whose plasma showing high viral neutralization potential are good candidates for generation of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies against HIV-1. Further, determining their neutralization specificities will help in identifying epitopes crucial for vaccine design. This is the first study on evaluating the humoral immune responses in HIV-1 infected children.