High frequency of CD8 escape mutations in elite controllers as new obstacle for HIV cure

Figures & data

Table 1. Characteristics of patients included in the study.

Characteristic	Study Group		p-value
	EC	TX
n	7	10	-
Age (Years)	42 [32-46]	47 [44-51]	0.070
Male (%)	57	90	0.116
CD4 counts (cells/μL)	744 [696-957]	988 [585-1469]	0.526
Time since HIV diagnosis (Years)	5 [4-12]	13 [11-16]	0.011
Lenght of EC status (Years)	5 [2-7]	NA	-
Lenght of treatment (Years)	NA	12 [9-16]	-

Data are expressed as Median [IQR], except sex, expressed as %; p-value: comparison between EC and TX groups (Mann-Whitney U test); NA: not apply. EC: elite controller patients; TX: non-controller patients on cART.

Figure 1. Whisker-Boxplots showing: (a) Number of best-defined CTL epitopes predicted according to the HLA-I haplotype of patients; (b) Proportion (%) of mutated CTL epitopes in autologous sequences obtained from the viral reservoir; (c) ratio of mutated amino acids (mutated amino acids/total amino acids) per individual CTL epitope. p-values for the comparisons between EC and TX groups of patients (Mann-Whitney U test) are shown.

Figure 2. Proportion (%) of autologous mutated CTL epitopes presented by HLA-I alleles that are shared between EC (white bars) and TX (grey bars) groups of patients. No significant differences (chi-square test) were found in the proportion of autologous mutated CTL epitopes between EC and TX groups.

Figure 3. Whisker-Boxplots showing: (a) Proportion (%) of escape mutations within mutated CTL epitopes in EC and TX patients. (b) Proportion (%) of mutated CTL epitopes with a significant impact in reducing HLA recognition in EC and TX patients. p-values for the comparison between groups (Mann-Whitney U test) are shown.

Data availability statement

Data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.