Maintenance of HIV-Specific Central and Effector Memory CD4 and CD8 T Cells Requires Antigen Persistence

The HIV-specific central and effector CD4 and CD8 memory T cell populations disappear from the peripheral blood of infected individuals under highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) with a mean half-life of 6.0 and 7.7 months, respectively. By contrast, cytomegalovirus (CMV)-specific responses are stable or increase. The striking quantitative differences between T cell memory to two persistent viral infections are instructive as to how antigen dosage contributes to the maintenance of antigen-specific memory T cell responses in humans.