Cristian Apetrei

TL;DR: It is proposed that evolutionary adaptation to both preserve immune function with fewer mucosal CD4+ T cells and attenuate the immune activation that follows acute viral infection protect these animals from progressing to AIDS.

TL;DR: The data support a revised paradigm wherein severe GALT CD4+ T cell depletion during acute pathogenic HIV and SIV infections of humans and Rh is necessary but neither sufficient nor predictive of disease progression, with levels of immune activation, proliferation and apoptosis being key factors involved in determining progression to AIDS.

TL;DR: A comparison of consistent patterns in lentivirus biology will expose new directions for scientific inquiry for understanding the basis for virulence versus avirulence and for host-lentiviral adaptation which are relevant to human HIV/AIDS infection.

TL;DR: The data show that SIVagm infection is associated with an immediate antiinflammatory environment and suggest that TGF-beta may participate in the generation of Tregs, which may prevent an aberrant chronic T cell hyperactivation.

TL;DR: It is proposed here that HIV vaccine research could greatly benefit from the study of natural simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infections of African nonhuman primates, and how unraveling these evolutionary adaptations may provide clues for new vaccine designs that might induce effective immune responses without the harmful consequences of excessive immune activation.