Immunological and virological effects of long term IL-2 therapy in HIV-1-infected patients

We report the long-term outcome of 27 HIV-infected patients treated for ove r 3 years with IL-2 and binucleoside analogues. These patients experienced a sustained increase in CD4 cells and a decrease of proviral DNA with infre quent IL-2 cycles. In three cases, virus could not be isolated from activat ed peripheral cells. A high frequency of HIV-1-specific memory CD4 T cells was found in the patients studied. IL-2 maintains specific effector cells a nd reduces the pool of infected cells in patients, albeit treated only with binucleosides.