Figure 5

Intracellular cytokine staining of CP CD8⁺T cells. A-D: CD8⁺ T cells of HLA-B*57 positive CP were either freshly isolated (left) or stimulated with either wild type (center) or escape variant (right) HLA-B*57-restricted Gag peptides for 7 days. CPs were either on suppressive HAART regiments with undetectable viral loads (circles), were on HAART regimens but recently had detectable levels of viremia (triangles), or were not on HAART and had high levels of viremia (diamond). Cells from each group underwent an overnight stimulation with individual peptides. Percentage of CD8⁺ T cells expressing IFN-γ when restimulated with TW10 (A), KF11 (B), and IW9 (C) in blue, or the escape mutant variant peptide containing T242N/G248A (A), A163S (B), and I147L (C) mutations in red is shown. E-H: Percentage of CD8⁺ T cells expressing both IFN-γ and perforin after overnight stimulation with TW10 (E), KF11 (F), and IW9 (G) in blue, or the escape mutant variant peptide containing T242N/G248A (E), A163S (F), and I147L (G) mutations in red is shown. D and H show CD8⁺ T cells that express IFN-γ or co-express IFN-γ and perforin when PBMCs were stimulated overnight with Gag 263-272 (KK10, HLA-B*27⁺ peptide). Black asterisks indicate statistically significant difference (P < 0.05) between samples when restimulated with the same variant peptide; gray asterisks indicates statistically significant difference (P < 0.05) between samples when restimulated with opposite variant peptide.