Project description:Objective: To elucidate molecular mechanisms of neurocognitive dysfunction in long-term HIV-infected individuals by assessing the microRNA (miR) profile and determining clinical and neurocognitive correlates to miR expression. Design: Analysis of miR profile in frontal cortex of retrospectively-identified autopsy cases of longitudinally-followed subjects with HIV-infection and age/sex-matched controls. HIV-subjects had semi-annual neuropsychiatric and clinical testing, at autopsy, tissue was archived. Methods: MiR repertoires were profiled from frontal cortices. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey Honestly Sigificant Difference (HSD) tests with Benjamini-Hochberg correction for multiple comparisons were used to compare expression among the three groups. Pairwise correlations were used to identify neuropsychiatric variable that correlatee with expression of miRs. Results: MiRs were significantly different by HIV-status: miR-103, miR-125a, miR-380, miR-422a, miR-515, miR-520b, miR0618, miR-886, and miR-9. Many miRs correlated with neuropsychiatric outcomes like Learning, Memory, Executive, Verbal, and Motor deficit scores. Conclusions: MiRs are clearly dysregulated in the frontal cortex of HIV-positive individuals. Only a few miRs were significantly dysregulated in only the methamphetamine group. Our study identifies miRs that form rational targets for further inquiry on biochemical mechanisms of HIV-related neurocognitive deficits. Learning deficit score correlates with expression of more miRs than other parameters. A total of 11 HIV positive individuals were analyzed, 5 of which had a past history of methamphetamine ABUSE, and 5 age-matched HIV-negative normal Controls. Technical duplicates are included. Included are clinical and neuropsychiatric data from most recent visit before time of death. This is a retrospective autopsy study of longitudinally-followed subjects on miRNA levels in the frontal cortex.
Project description:Objective: To elucidate molecular mechanisms of neurocognitive dysfunction in long-term HIV-infected individuals by assessing the microRNA (miR) profile and determining clinical and neurocognitive correlates to miR expression. Design: Analysis of miR profile in frontal cortex of retrospectively-identified autopsy cases of longitudinally-followed subjects with HIV-infection and age/sex-matched controls. HIV-subjects had semi-annual neuropsychiatric and clinical testing, at autopsy, tissue was archived. Methods: MiR repertoires were profiled from frontal cortices. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey Honestly Sigificant Difference (HSD) tests with Benjamini-Hochberg correction for multiple comparisons were used to compare expression among the three groups. Pairwise correlations were used to identify neuropsychiatric variable that correlatee with expression of miRs. Results: MiRs were significantly different by HIV-status: miR-103, miR-125a, miR-380, miR-422a, miR-515, miR-520b, miR0618, miR-886, and miR-9. Many miRs correlated with neuropsychiatric outcomes like Learning, Memory, Executive, Verbal, and Motor deficit scores. Conclusions: MiRs are clearly dysregulated in the frontal cortex of HIV-positive individuals. Only a few miRs were significantly dysregulated in only the methamphetamine group. Our study identifies miRs that form rational targets for further inquiry on biochemical mechanisms of HIV-related neurocognitive deficits. Learning deficit score correlates with expression of more miRs than other parameters.
Project description:Finding the differences in gene expression in three regions of the brain, basal ganglia, white matter, and frontal cortex, in normal, HIV infected, HIV infected with neurocognitive impairment, and HIV infected with both neurocognitive impairment and encephalitis patients.
Project description:Finding the differences in gene expression in three regions of the brai, basal ganglia, white matter, and frontal cortex, in normal, HIV infected, HIV inefected with neurocognitive impairment, and HIV infected with both neurocognitive impairment and encephalitis patients. We used microarrays to identify differentially expressed genes in normal, HIV infected, HIV inefected with neurocognitive impairment, and HIV infected with both neurocognitive impairment and encephalitis patients. Samples from three different brain regions from normal, HIV infected, HIV infected with neurocognitive impairment (HAD: HIV-associated dementia), and HIV infected with both neurocognitive impairment and encephalitis (HIVE: HIV encephalitis) patients were collected for RNA isolation and supsequent Affymetrix microarray analysis. We sought to obtain gene expression levels in different brain regions to find implication of HIV and the neurological impairment and inflammation associated with HIV infection.
Project description:Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a clinically defined entity with little understanding as to the underlying pathological substrate. Biologically, MDD is characterized by disruption of neurotransmitters, especially serotonin and noradrenaline, which are the main targets of antidepressants. We previously demonstrated significant reduction of glial cell number in the cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortical regions. Unfortunately, individuals living with HIV still have very high rates of MDD, despite the fact that mortality rates have fallen sharply with effective antiretroviral treatment. It is possible that in this treatment era, living with chronic HIV infection may result in long-term neuropathological changes that predispose to MDD. For example, it is known that HIV is associated with a range of inflammatory pathologies, neuronal loss, and dendrite-synaptic damage. In HIV, these neurodegenerative changes have been linked to neurocognitive impairments, however it is also possible that these changes potentiate MDD. In the current study, we sought to determine whether there are changes in gene expression in the MDD brain in the frontal cortex in HIV-context. We identify a large number of genes dysregulated at p<0.05 significance. Retrospective gene expression analysis of autopsy brain tissue. Four HIV/MDD subjects are identified and age-matched HIV patients without neuropsychiatric conditions are compared as controls.
Project description:The continuing spread of HIV/AIDS is predominantly fueled by sexual exposure to HIV-contaminated semen. Seminal plasma (SP), the liquid portion of semen, harbors a variety of factors that may favor HIV transmission by facilitating viral entry into host cells, eliciting the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and enhancing the translocation of HIV across the genital epithelium. One important and abundant class of factors in SP is extracellular vesicles (EVs), which in general are important intercellular signal transducers. Although numerous studies have characterized blood plasma-derived EVs from both uninfected and HIV-infected individuals, little is known about the properties of EVs from semen of HIV-infected individuals. We report here that fractionated SP enriched for EVs from HIV-infected men induce potent transcriptional responses in epithelial and stromal cells that interface with luminal contents of the female reproductive tract. Compared to semen EV fractions from uninfected individuals, those from acutely-infected individuals induced a more pro-inflammatory signature. This was not associated with any observable differences in the surface phenotypes of the vesicles. However, miRNA expression profiling analysis revealed that EV fractions from infected individuals exhibit a broader and more diverse profile. Taken together, our data suggest that SP EVs from HIV-infected individuals exhibit unique miRNA signatures and exert potent pro-inflammatory transcriptional changes in cells of the female reproductive tract, which may facilitate HIV transmission.
Project description:The relationship between host microRNAs (miRNA), viral control and immune response has not been elucidated in the field of HIV yet. The aim of this study was to assess the differential miRNA profile in CD8+ T-cells between HIV-infected individuals who differ in terms of disease progression.
Project description:We examined the gene expression profiles in ex vivo human CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from untreated HIV-infected individuals at different clinical stages and rates of disease progression. Profiles of pure CD4+ and CD8+ T cells subsets from HIV-infected nonprogressors who controlled viremia were indistinguishable from HIV-uninfected individuals. Similarly, no gene clusters could distinguish T cells from individuals with early from chronic progressive HIV infection, whereas differences were observed between uninfected or nonprogressors versus early or chronic progressors. In early/chronic HIV infection, three characteristic gene expression signatures were observed: (1) CD4+ and CD8+ T cells showed increased expression of interferon stimulated genes (ISGs). However, some ISGs including CXCL9, CXCL10, and CXCL11, and the IL15R? in both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and the anti-HIV ISG APOBEC3G in CD4+ T cells, were not upregulated. (2) CD4+ and CD8+ T cells showed a cluster similar to that observed in thymocytes, and (3) more genes were differentially regulated in CD8+ T cells than in CD4+ T cells, including a cluster of genes downregulated exclusively in CD8+ T cells. In conclusion, HIV infection induces a persistent T cell transcriptional profile, early in infection, characterized by a dramatic but potentially aberrant interferon response, and a profile suggesting an active thymic output. We studied a cohort of HIV infected individuals with various clinical stages of HIV infection and healthy uninfected volunteers as a control group (Table 1). We included 5 individuals with early HIV infection (A), five with chronic progressive HIV infection (C), five individuals with non-progressive HIV infection with low or undetectable viral loads (L) and five HIV uninfected individuals (N). The HIV infected individuals were never on therapy prior to entering the study. Samples were taken once from each donor.
Project description:A significant percentage of HIV-infected individuals experience a sharp decline in CD4+ T cell counts and progress to AIDS quickly after primary infection. Identification of biomarkers distinguishing rapid progressors (RPs) versus chronic progressors (CPs) is critical for early clinical intervention and could provide novel strategies to facilitate vaccine design and immune therapy. mRNA and miRNA expression profiles in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of RPs and CPs were investigated at 111±22 days (Mean±SD) of HIV infection. The association of mRNA and miRNA expression with disease progression was examined by receiver operating characteristic analysis and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Pathway enrichment analysis showed that genes with deregulated expression in RPs are primarily involved in apoptosis pathways. Furthermore, we found that 5 miRNAs (miR-31, -200c, -526a, -99a and -503) in RPs were significantly decreased compared to those in CPs (P<0.05). The decreased expression of these miRNAs was associated with rapid disease progression of HIV infection with a 94% predictive value as measured by the area under the curve. The upregulated predicted targets from the 5 signature miRNAs and all upregulated genes identified from mRNA microarray converged to the apoptosis pathway. Moreover, overexpression of miR-31 in primary human T cells promoted their survival. Our results have identified a distinct transcriptomic signature in PBMCs of RPs and provided novel insights to the pathogenesis of HIV infection. A cohort of primary HIV infected individuals with different disease outcome were enrolled in this study. We included 6 individuals with rapid disease progression (RP), seven with chronic disease progression (CP). The HIV infected individuals were never on therapy before the time of sample taken.