An unsuccessful attempt to isolate human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from patients with primary immunodeficiency...

Isolation of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was performed in 5 seronegative patients with primary immunodeficiency diseases (IDDs) who had no or little ability to produce antibodies and received a large amount of intravenous gammaglobulin (IVG) for a long period. In this study cultured cells were considered to be infected if the following 2 criteria were met: (1) They produced reverse transcriptase (RT) activity in the supernatant fluid and (2) expressed viral antigens. Under experimental conditions, virus was demonstrated by both RT activity and viral antigen expression detectable by immunofluorescence technique in lymphocyte cultures from 2 seropositive patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome-related complex who were examined as controls. There was no evidence of HIV infection in cultures of lymphocytes from all of the 5 patients with primary IDDs and from 2 healthy subjects. The above patients did not show the extremely low numbers of target T4+ cells, which make isolation of the virus in lymphocytes difficult. The present results suggest that current methods of IVG preparation either remove or inactivate HIV.