Researchers have discovered two genes that are associated with the restriction of HIV by type 1 interferon, a protein that inhibits virus replication. The findings could offer a way to manipulate these antiviral genes as part of a potential treatment for chronic HIV infection, the researchers say. Interferon, sometimes given as a drug to patients with HIV, stimulates the production of hundreds of genes that help control viral infections. Although clinicians know that interferon can help reduce HIV replication and proliferation, the exact mechanisms behind this effect — including which genes it may activate — remain mostly unknown. Sequencing the RNA from CD4+ T cells in 19 HIV-infected people before and after injection of interferon alpha 2b revealed that the injection reduced HIV RNA while boosting mRNA expression for 99 genes within the CD4+ T cells. Among those genes, 13 showed an increase in expression that corresponded with the magnitude of HIV RNA decline, suggesting that they could have been responsible in some way for suppressing HIV in the cells. The report has been published in Science Advances .
