Short Communication: No Detrimental Immunological Effects of Mycophenolate Mofetil and HAART in Treatment-Naive Acute and Chronic HIV-1-Infected Patients

Mycophenolate mofetil has been proposed for HIV-1 therapy because of its guanine-depleting effect, which is expected to interfere with HIV-1 replication directly by hampering reverse transcription and indirectly via inhibition of CD4+ T cell proliferation. However, treatment with mycophenolate mofetil might also compromise lymphocyte reconstitution and HIV-specific immunity. Therefore we longitudinally studied the effects of mycophenolate mofetil in combination with HAART on T cell proliferation, lymphocyte reconstitution, and HIV-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses in six therapy-naive, acute or chronic HIV-1-infected patients, as compared to eight patients treated with HAART alone. T cell proliferation in whole blood cultures of patients treated with mycophenolate mofetil was inhibited. Strikingly, ex vivo Ki67 expression within T cells was not influenced by treatment with mycophenolate mofetil. In vitro studies showed that Ki67 expression occurs at an early step of the cell cycle and was not inhibi...