The Compartmental Biology of HIV in the Male Genital Tract

 描述（由申请人提供）：HIV主要是一种性传播疾病，由未感染者的粘膜暴露于受感染的生殖器分泌物引起。我们研究了精液中的艾滋病毒，以便更好地了解性传播，并制定艾滋病毒预防策略。我们小组和其他人的工作表明，抗逆转录病毒治疗降低了精液中艾滋病毒的浓度，因此，接受治疗的人的传染性较低。然而，即使经过治疗，也可以从精浆中回收HIV RNA，从精细胞中回收HIV DNA。我们希望了解艾滋病毒的“残留脱落”，以确定艾滋病毒传播的持续潜力，并制定战略，从男性生殖道消除艾滋病毒。在本申请中，我们提出更好地理解ART在男性生殖道中的药理学，研究尽管治疗但病毒脱落，以及精液中似乎允许HIV检测的条件（因素）。我们希望这些结果将确定“残留脱落”的基础。“必须从男性生殖道中消除艾滋病毒，以完全消除传播，并治愈感染。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): HIV is primarily a sexually transmitted disease, resulting from exposure of the mucosa of uninfected people to infected genital secretions. We have studied HIV in semen in order to better understand sexual transmission, and to develop HIV prevention strategies. Work by our group and others has shown that antiretroviral treatment reduces the concentration of HIV in semen, and-accordingly-treated people are less contagious. However, even with treatment HIV RNA can be recovered from seminal plasma and HIV DNA from seminal cells. We would like to understand "residual shedding" of HIV so as to determine ongoing potential for HIV transmission, and to develop strategies to eliminate HIV from the male genital tract. In this Application we propose to better understand the pharmacology of ART in the male genital tract, to study virus shed in spite of treatment, and the conditions (factors) in semen that appear to permit HIV detection. We hope these results will determine the basis for "residual shedding." HIV must be eliminated from the male genital tract to completely abrogate transmission, and to cure the infection.