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Cervicovaginal antibody response may protect some women from HIV infection

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Genital resistance to HIV infection, involving an HIV-specific cervicovaginal antibody response plus other factors, seems to protect some highly HIV-exposed but HIV-seronegative women, researchers report.

Dr. Laurent Bיlec from the Hפpital Europיen Georges Pompidou, Paris, and colleagues collected cervicovaginal secretions from 342 HIV-seronegative female African sex workers who had been repeatedly exposed to the HIV virus.

In 7.5% of these women there were antibodies to HIV of the IgA, IgG and IgM isotypes. There were also high levels of the HIV suppressive beta-chemokine RANTES (regulated on activation, normally T cell expressed and secreted), the researchers found.

Since these antibodies were seen in vaginal fluid that was not contaminated by semen, these antibodies appear to be part of a local immune response to HIV, Dr. Bיlec's team believes.

These antibodies had a homogeneous reactivity pattern, which was confined to gp160 and p24. This pattern is similar to that found in serum in the primary invasion phase of HIV infection. Also, "locally produced anti-env antibodies exhibited a predominant reactivity toward neutralizing ELDKWA epitope of gp41 for the linear epitopes tested," the investigators note. They surmise that the antibodies prevent viral transcytosis through tight epithelial barriers.

"In the absence of evidence of systemic infection and in the absence of detectable proviral DNA in cervicovaginal cells, our results raise the possibility that the genital anti-HIV immune response cleared the virus efficiently at the mucosal level and prevented systemic infection," the authors write in the December 2001 issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Bיlec and colleagues believe that "the elucidation of the mechanisms involved in the generation of a protective HIV-specific immunity in the genital tract of exposed seronegative women may be of major relevance for the design of a vaccine against HIV."

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