PLOS Science Wednesday: Hi reddit, we’re Mahdad, Lucy and Gabriele. We found several different effects of HIV-1 infection on anti-TB immune response, presenting new implications for treating patients with TB and HIV infections – Ask Us Anything!

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Hi Reddit,

My name is Dr Mahdad Noursadeghi. I lead a research group in Infection & Immunity at University College London, in which we try to discriminate between human immune responses to microbial infection that protect us from those that cause disease. We focus our efforts on tuberculosis (TB), HIV and the role of macrophages.

And my name is Dr Lucy Bell. I’m a researcher in Infection & Immunity at University College London. My research explores the impact of HIV-1 infection on immune responses to other infections, such as TB, using methods ranging from in vitro macrophage co-infection experiments to human experimental challenge models.

And my name is Dr Gabriele Pollara. I'm a postdoctoral clinical research fellow at University College London. My work focuses on understanding the nature of protective immune responses to TB infection. My main methodological interests are the use of transcriptional modules to deconvolute biological information from whole genome transcriptional datasets.

We recently published a paper titled “In Vivo Molecular Dissection of the Effects of HIV-1 in Active Tuberculosis“ in PLOS Pathogens. We aimed to investigate whether HIV-1 infection changed the anti-TB immune response in vivo in patients with active TB, by using the tuberculin skin test (the TST, also known as the Mantoux test) as a challenge model. By analysing biopsy samples taken from the site of TSTs, we found several effects of HIV-1. In early HIV-1 infection, we found diminishment of an immune response component that usually helps prevent harmful inflammation. In more advanced HIV-1, we found almost complete absence of any anti-TB immune response, except for activity which is normally part of our defence against viruses. In a third group of patients, in whom active TB only became apparent after starting treatment for HIV-1, we found that most immune responses had recovered to normal levels, but that one particular response sometimes associated with asthma and allergies was exaggerated.

Our results provide new insights which may help explain why HIV-1 positive patients have a substantially increased risk of active TB, and which may inform the development of new treatments for HIV-1/TB co-infection.

We will be answering your questions about our research, TB and HIV at 1pm ET. Ask us Anything!

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter: @mnoursad, @LucyCKBell, @gpollara, @innate2adaptive.

And check out our research group website.

">PLOS Science Wednesday: Hi reddit, we’re Mahdad, Lucy and Gabriele. We found several different effects of HIV-1 infection on anti-TB immune response, presenting new implications for treating patients with TB and HIV infections – Ask Us Anything!