This is a study to assess the reliability and reproducibility of measurements of CTL activity and HIV-specific proliferation in a blinded study of 15 HIV infected and 3 HIV uninfected control individuals. Proof of blood mononuclear cells were collected at time 0 and two weeks later and CTL assays of HIV specific activity as well as HIV specific proliferative activity were assessed in Dr. Bollinger and Dr. Lederman's Lab. All 18 of the proposed subjects were fully enrolled and accrued for this study. In addition, HIV plasma viral load and cell surface flow cytometric analysis was performed in Dr. Quinn's lab on all samples. Preliminary results of this study are outlined in an abstract recently submitted to the 121 World AIDS Conference in Geneva scheduled for June, 1998. In summary, in this blinded analysis HIV-specific CTL activity directed against multiple HIV antigens measured by bulk culture antigen specific stimulation of frozen PBMC's demonstrated statistically significant correlation with viral load and CD4 count. The best method for correlating HIV specific CTL with clinical stage utilized an area under specific lysis curve analysis. The conclusion was that this method may be useful for measuring CTL activities in clinical trials.
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