SOUS-PROGRAMME 1 : PRÉVENTION DU VIH ET DU SIDA

Background: Combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) can bring HIV-1 in blood plasma to level undetectable by standard tests and allow a near-normal life expectancy for HIV-infected individuals. Unfortunately, cART is not curative, as within a few weeks of treatment cessation, HIV viremia in most patients rebounds except for rare elite or post-treatment controllers of viremia. The primary source of this rebound is the highly stable reservoir of latent yet replication-competent HIV-1 proviruses integrated into the genomic DNA of resting memory CD4+ T cells. To achieve a cure for HIV, understanding the cell reservoir environment is of paramount importance. The size and nature of viral reservoir might vary per timing of therapy, therapeutic response, ART duration, and immune response. Mechanisms of reservoir maintenance generally depend on levels/type of immune recognition, dynamics of viral persistence are different between pediatric and adult populations, owing to, but not limited to, types/numbers of target cells, efficiency in clearing HIV-infected cells, plasma viremia and HIV drug resistance patterns. This difference could become more evident as these children grow toward adolescence (increasing population due to ART benefits), a stage during which suboptimal adherence is frequent, leading to viral rebound and archiving of resistant patterns.