Kinetics of appearance of neutralizing antibodies in 12 patients with primary or recent HIV-1 infection and relationship with plasma and cellular viral loads.

HIV-1 primary infection is characterized by a short high titer viremia, which rapidly declines as the immune response emerges. The role of autologous neutralizing antibodies in the decline of viral replication was evaluated in 12 patients with primary or recent HIV-1 infection. Neutralizing antibodies detected for each patient could not generally be observed before several months after isolation of the first obtained HIV isolate. The plasma viral load, as measured by quantitation of the HIV-1 RNA, underwent a global decrease during the first 6 months of the infection, but this decrease did not seem to be associated with the emergence of neutralizing antibodies. The proviral load in peripheral blood mononuclear cells, which was studied by quantitative DNA polymerase chain reaction, exhibited fluctuations and was not as well curtailed as the plasma viremia in the majority of patients.