Detection of HIV-1 RNA/DNA and CD4 mRNA in feces and urine from chronic HIV-1 infected subjects with and without anti-retroviral therapy | AIDS Research and Therapy BioMed Central Open Access Detection of HIV-1 RNA DNA and CD4 mRNA in feces and urine from chronic HIV-1 infected subjects with and without anti-retroviral therapy Ayan K Chakrabarti Lori Caruso Ming Ding Chengli Shen William Buchanan Phalguni Gupta Charles R Rinaldo and Yue Chen Address Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Graduate School of Public Health University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 15261 USA Email Ayan K Chakrabarti - akc1@ Lori Caruso - lcaruso@ Ming Ding - mding@ Chengli Shen - chs97@ William Buchanan - bill@ Phalguni Gupta - pgupta1@ Charles R Rinaldo - rinaldo@ Yue Chen - cheny@ Corresponding author Published 2 October 2009 Received 7 July 2009 AIDS Research and Therapy 2009 6 20 doi 1742-6405-6-20 Accepted 2 October 2009 This article is available from http content 6 1 20 2009 Chakrabarti et al licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http licenses by which permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract HIV-1 infects gut associated lymphoid tissues GALT very early after transmission by multiple routes. The infected GALT consequently serves as the major reservoir for HIV-1 infection and could constantly shed HIV-1 and CD4 T cells into the intestinal lumen. To examine this hypothesis we monitored HIV-1 RNA DNA and CD4 mRNA in fecal samples of chronically infected subjects with and without antiretroviral therapy ART . We compared this to levels of HIV-1 RNA DNA in urine and blood from the same subjects. Our results show that HIV-1 DNA RNA and CD4 mRNA were detected in 8 19 and 31 respectively of feces samples from infected subjects with detectable plasma viral load and were not detected in any of subjects on ART
