Correlations of soluble interleukin-2 and tumor necrosis factor type II receptors with immunologic and virologic responses under HAART

We assessed the correlations between some plasma markers of immune activation (soluble receptors of interleukin 2 (sIL2-R) and TNFalphap75 (sTNFII-R) and usual markers of HIV infection in patients treated with protease-inhibitors (PI). Forty-six PI-naive HIV-1-infected adults were included in a 1-year prospective cohort from the initiation of a PI-containing regimen (MO). Measurements of CD4+cell count. plasma HIV-RNA, sIL2-R and sTNFII-R were performed at MO, M6. and M12. The evolution of sIL2-R from baseline to M12 was significantly different between immunological responders (IR) (CD4+count above 200/mm(3) for subject having less than 200 CD4+/mm(3) at inclusion., or increase of at least 50 CD4+/mm(3) for others) (58 UI/ml) and non-IR (+28 UI/ml) (P=0.01). The evolution of sTNFII-R between MO and M12 was significantly different between virological responders (VR) (plasma HIV-1 RNA less than 500 copies/ml at M12) (-2.5 ng/ml) and non-VR (+0.2 ng/ml) (P=0.02). Our study shows significative correlations between the evolutions of soluble interleukin-2 and TNFR-II receptors and those of CD4+T-lymphocytes or HIV-RNA responses in patients under HAART.