Longitudinal study of serum neutralization of HIV-1 in infected plasma donors

Earlier studies provided suggestive evidence about the effectiveness of passive immunotherapy for AIDS patients using plasma donated by healthy HIV-1 infected individuals and revealed beneficial effects of plasmapheresis for the immune system of the donors. In this study, anti-HIV-1 neutralizing activity in 31 healthy HIV-1 infected donors of plasma participating in a passive immunotherapy study was investigated as a function of time. Average studied period was 33 months. Using the highly cytopathic HIV-1 NDK strain and MOLT4 cells, it was shown by means of syncytia formation inhibition assay and polyclonal HIV-1 antigen-capture assay that viral neutralizing titers tend either to remain unchanged or increase over time. These findings support the notion that the immune system is not affected adversely in HIV-1 infected plasma donors and lend further support to the feasibility of passive immunotherapy for AIDS patients.