Influence of Antiretroviral Regimen on Immune Reconstitution in the Female Genital Tract

Increases in cluster of differentiation 4 (CD4)+ T cells in the blood is well documented in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals after starting antiretroviral therapy (ART), but increases CD4+ T cells in the cervix is variable and not fully understood. Although the amount of HIV in the vagina declines in parallel with those in the plasma when antiretroviral therapy for HIV is started, HIV is still detected frequently in cervical samples from women with undetectable plasma viral loads, suggesting that low level viral replication in the female vaginal tract could lead to both inflammation and incomplete increases in CD4+ T cells. Two classes of HIV medications, nonnucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors and protease inhibitors are substantially lower in the female genital tract compared to plasma, whereas concentrations of another class, nucleos(t)ide analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors are similar or higher to those found in plasma. Thus, many widely used first-line three drug HIV therapies only achieve high concentrations of only two medications in the female genital tract. Importantly, with the recent development of raltegravir (RAL), which achieves concentrations in the female genital tract higher than those in plasma, ART regimens that deliver high concentrations of 3 antiretroviral drugs to the female genital tract are now available. The investigators hypothesize that cervical CD4+ T cell reconstitution is better and inflammatory markers are lower in HIV-infected women on a HIV-therapy including tenofovir (TDF) and emtricitabine (FTC) with RAL versus ritonavir (RIT)-boosted atazanavir (ATZ), and that this is due to therapeutic concentrations of 3 versus 2 antiretroviral drugs in the female genital tract.