Journal of Clinical Trials, Pathology and Case StudiesJournal of Clinical Trials, Pathology and Case StudiesJournal of Clinical Trials, Pathology and Case StudiesJournal of Clinical Trials, Pathology and Case Studies2578-224XOmmega Online PublishersNew Jersey, USA1003Research ArticleCo-variation between HERV-K RNA Expression and CD4 Cell Counts in Untreated HIV-1 Infected IndividualsCo-variation between HERV-K RNA Expression and CD4 Cell Counts in Untreated HIV-1 Infected IndividualsJianliDong 1Department of Pathology University of Texas Medical Branch 301 University Boulevard Galveston TX USA 2Divisi oacute n de Ciencias de la Salud Universidad de Monterrey Nuevo Le oacute n M eacute xico 3Internal Medicine University of Texas Medical Branch 301 University Boulevard Galveston TX USA sect Authors contributed equally to this work Editor* E-mail: jidong@utmb.edu
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
20163008201611JCPM-16-RA-100307072016230820162016Creative Commons Attribution LicenseThis is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. nbsp emsp emsp Human endogenous retroviruses HERVs have been implicated in the etiology of cancer chronic inflammation and other diseases and emerging data supports the regulation and functional interaction between K type HERV HERV-K and HIV-1 In this study we performed a reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction RT-PCR assay using DNase I digestion to remove ldquo contaminating rdquo HERV-K genomic DNA and examined HERV-K RNA expression in plasma samples from 54 untreated newly diagnosed HIV-1 infected individuals We found that HERV-K expression did not correlate with HIV-1 viral load However the mean CD4 cell count was significantly lower in HERV-K RNA positive specimens Further studies are necessary to examine the regulatory relationship between HERV-K and CD4 cell counts in HIV-1 infected individuals 10