The Effect of Antiretroviral Naïve HIV-1 Infection on the Ability of Natural Killer Cells to Produce IFN-γ upon Exposure to Plasmodium falciparum-Infected Erythrocytes.

Our data show a significant reduction ( = 0.03) in IFN-γ production by NK cells from antiretroviral naïve HIV-1-infected people after coculture with iRBCs. This was in contrast to the NK cell response from healthy controls, which demonstrated elevated IFN-γ production. NK cell IFN-γ production from untreated HIV-1-infected participants correlated inversely with the viral load ( = -0.5, = 0.02) and positively with total helper CD4 T-cell count ( = 0.4, = 0.04). Thus, antiretroviral naïve HIV-1 infection can dampen NK cell-mediated immunity to infection in malaria-intense regions. This could in effect escalate morbidity and mortality in people chronically infected with HIV-1.