Figure 4

Kinetics of HIV-1 during cART. A: Plasma viremia shown by log₁₀ transformed plasma RNA copy numbers. B: Total HIV-1 infected cells shown by log₁₀ transformed copy numbers of HIV-1 DNA. C; D: Latently infected cells shown by log₁₀ transformed numbers of HIV-RNA⁺ PBMC of cell classes I_Low (D) and II_Medium(C). E, F: Cells with increased viral transcription shown by log₁₀ transformed numbers of class II_High (F) and III_Extra (E). G: Mean (± sem) distribution of HIV-RNA⁺ cells during cART. H: Mean (± sem) contribution of different HIV-RNA⁺ cell classes to bulk cellular viral RNA as assessed by the sum of UsRNA and MsRNA in total RNA extracts. Data in A-F are depicted and connected with thin black lines for each patient (see symbols in the bottom of panel D). Dotted lines and the grey shaded bars in panels A and C-F show the estimated detection limit of limiting dilution analyses for HIV-RNA⁺ PBMC. Symbols coinciding with detection limits signify time points with undetectable viral RNA. Thick black lines depict (log₁₀ transformed) means (± sem) of the pooled data from all 5 patients. The grey line in panel A indicates the clinically used threshold of 50 RNA copy per ml.