The replication-competent HIV reservoir is a genetically restricted, younger subset of the overall pool of HIV proviruses persisting during therapy, which is highly genetically stable over time

Abstract

Abstract Within-host HIV populations continually diversify during untreated infection, and members of these diverse forms persist within infected cell reservoirs, even during antiretroviral therapy (ART). Characterizing the diverse viral sequences that persist during ART is critical to HIV cure efforts, but our knowledge of on-ART proviral evolutionary dynamics remains incomplete, as does our understanding of the differences between the overall pool of persisting proviral DNA (which is largely genetically defective) and the subset of intact HIV sequences capable of reactivating. Here, we reconstructed within-host HIV evolutionary histories in blood from seven participants of the Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) who experienced HIV seroconversion. We measured diversity, lineage origins and ages of proviral sequences (env-gp120) sampled up to four times, up to 12 years on ART. We used the same techniques to study HIV sequences emerging from the reservoir in two participants. Proviral clonality generally increased over time on ART, with clones frequently persisting across multiple time points. The integration dates of proviruses persisting on ART generally spanned the duration of untreated infection (though were often skewed towards years immediately pre-ART), while in contrast, reservoir-origin viremia emerging in plasma was exclusively "younger" (i.e., dated to the years immediately pre-ART). The genetic and age distributions of distinct proviral sequences remained highly stable during ART in all but one participant in whom, after 12 years, there was evidence that "younger" proviruses had been preferentially eliminated. Analysis of within-host recombinant proviral sequences also suggested that HIV reservoirs can be superinfected with virus reactivated from an older era, yielding infectious viral progeny with mosaic genomes of sequences with different ages. Overall, results underscore the remarkable genetic stability of distinct proviral sequences that persist on ART, yet suggest that replication-competent HIV reservoir represents a genetically-restricted and overall "younger" subset of the overall persisting proviral pool in blood.