Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART)-Related Hypertriglyceridemia Is Associated With Failure of Recovery of CD14lowCD16+ Monocyte Subsets in AIDS Patients

As cellular reservoirs, CD16 monocyte subsets play important roles in the progression of HIV infection. Previous studies have shown that highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) reduced the percentages of CD14CD16 monocyte subsets, but did not recover the percentages of CD14CD16 subsets. Eighty-four chronic HIV-infected, HAART-naïve individuals and 55 HIV-negative subjects (31 without hyperlipidemia and 24 with hypertriglyceridemia) were enrolled. Plasma HIV-1 RNA levels, CD4 T-cell counts, triglycerides, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein, and low-density lipoprotein were followed up for 48 weeks during HAART treatment in the longitudinal study. We found that mild hypertriglyceridemia in HIV-negative subjects and HIV-infected patients, naïve to HAART, did not affect the percentage of monocyte subsets. However, a failure of CD14CD16 subset recovery was observed in patients with HAART-related hypertriglyceridemia at 48 weeks. Thus, HAART-related hypertriglyceridemia altered homeostasis of monocyte subsets to antiviral therapy, which might further affect immune reconstitution.