Cell Death by Pyroptosis Drives CD4 T-Cell Depletion in HIV-1 Infection.

Abstract

G Doitsh, NL Galloway, X Geng. Nature. 2014;505(7484):509–514 HIV-induced disease is characterized by progressive CD4+ T-cell depletion. A long-standing question has been: what drives this depletion? Earlier reports suggested that caspase-3–driven apoptosis was a primary form of HIV-induced T-cell depletion. The focus of the present study was to examine an alternative mechanism of T-cell loss induced by HIV. Human lymphoid aggregate culture formed with human tonsillar and splenic cells were used to study how CD4+ T cells die in a “natural and preserved lymphoid environment” in the absence of artificial cell activation. In situ immunostaining …