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The gastrointestinal tract is critical to the pathogenesis of acute HIV-1 infection.

Mehandru S, Tenner-Racz K, Racz P, Markowitz M

Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY 10016, USA. s.mehandr@adarc.org

It has become evident that the gastrointestinal tract is preferentially and profoundly depleted of CD4+ T cells during acute HIV-1 infection. The enhanced susceptibility of gastrointestinal lymphoid tissue to HIV-1 is in part due to the large complement of CCR5+ memory CD4+ T cells resident at this site. Here we summarize the recent findings demonstrating that the gastrointestinal tract plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of acute HIV-1 and simian immunodeficiency virus infections. Ongoing work in this field is likely to have a significant effect on HIV research in the near future.

Published 8 August 2005 in J Allergy Clin Immunol, 116(2): 419-22.
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