HIV-1 infection depletes human CD34+CD38- hematopoietic progenitor cells via pDC-dependent mechanisms.

• Main Authors: Guangming Li, Juanjuan Zhao, Liang Cheng, Qi Jiang, Sheng Kan, Enqiang Qin, Bo Tu, Xin Zhang, Liguo Zhang, Lishan Su, Zheng Zhang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2017-07-01
• Series: PLoS Pathogens
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC5552321?pdf=render
• ISSN: 1553-7366; 1553-7374

Chronic human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) infection in patients leads to multi-lineage hematopoietic abnormalities or pancytopenia. The deficiency in hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) induced by HIV-1 infection has been proposed, but the relevant mechanisms are poorly understood. We report here that both human CD34+CD38- early and CD34+CD38+ intermediate HPCs were maintained in the bone marrow (BM) of humanized mice. Chronic HIV-1 infection preferentially depleted CD34+CD38- early HPCs in the BM and reduced their proliferation potential in vivo in both HIV-1-infected patients and humanized mice, while CD34+CD38+ intermediate HSCs were relatively unaffected. Strikingly, depletion of plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) prevented human CD34+CD38- early HPCs from HIV-1 infection-induced depletion and functional impairment and restored the gene expression profile of purified CD34+ HPCs in humanized mice. These findings suggest that pDCs contribute to the early hematopoietic suppression induced by chronic HIV-1 infection and provide a novel therapeutic target for the hematopoiesis suppression in HIV-1 patients.