Immune perturbation following SHIV infection is greater in newborn macaques than in infants

Transmission of HIV-1 to newborns and infants remains high, with 130,000 new infections in 2022 in resource-limited settings. Half of HIV-infected newborns, if untreated, progress to disease and death within 2 years. While immunologic immaturity likely promotes pathogenesis and poor viral control, little is known about immune damage in newborns and infants. Here we examined pathologic, virologic, and immunologic outcomes in rhesus macaques exposed to pathogenic simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) at 1-2 weeks, defined as newborns, or at 4 months of age, considered infants. Kinetics of plasma viremia and lymph node seeding DNA were indistinguishable in newborns and infants, but levels of viral DNA in gut and lymphoid tissues 6-10 weeks after infection were significantly higher in newborns versus either infant or adult macaques. Two of 6 newborns with the highest viral seeding required euthanasia at 25 days. We observed age-dependent alterations in leukocyte subsets and gene expression. Compared with infants, newborns had stronger skewing of monocytes and CD8+ T cells toward differentiated subsets and little evidence of type I interferon responses by transcriptomic analyses. Thus, SHIV infection reveals distinct immunological alterations in newborn and infant macaques. These studies lay the groundwork for understanding how immune maturation affects pathogenesis in pediatric HIV-1 infection.