People with Spontaneous Control of HIV Have a Distinctive Reservoir

Elite controllers — rare individuals who have spontaneous control of HIV without antiretroviral therapy (ART) — may provide insights into how we might cure HIV. Now, investigators report finding that such individuals have a distinctive proviral reservoir, which may explain how they control HIV.

Using next-generation sequencing and analyses of where the virus integrated into the host genome, the investigators characterized the proviral reservoir in 64 elite controllers and 41 people with HIV who were receiving ART. Compared with individuals on ART, elite controllers were more likely to have intact proviruses integrated into parts of the host genome that are generally not transcribed, such as centromeric satellite DNA. HIV integration into the…