Mycobacterium tuberculosis Modulates the Expansion of Terminally Exhausted CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T-Cells in Individuals with...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the most common co-infection among people living with HIV (PLWH), aggravates the associated morbidity and mortality in these individuals; however, the immune-modulatory role of Mtb in the pathogenesis of HIV infection remains incompletely understood.

We investigated the role of Mtb infection in regulating adaptive immune responses with reference to the expression of five immune checkpoint molecules (ICMs) in co-infected individuals in a cross-sectional study conducted on treatment-naïve human cohorts from North India, including PLWH, people with Mtb infection, people with HIV-Mtb co-infection, and healthy volunteers as controls.

The data revealed a significantly increased gene expression of TIM-3 (p = 0.0058), LAG-3 (p < 0.0001), PD-1 (p = 0.0090), and CTLA-4 (p = 0.0008). It also revealed a higher frequency of CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T-cells surface-expressing TIM-3⁺, CTLA-4⁺, LAG-3⁺. Finally, it showed cells co-expressing two ICMs together (p < 0.05) in individuals with HIV-Mtb co-infection as compared to HIV mono-infected ones. Interestingly, the frequency of these cells correlated inversely with the absolute CD4⁺ T-cell count and positively with the plasma viral load (p < 0.05), indicating direct association with HIV disease progression.

These findings suggest that Mtb co-infection exacerbates immune exhaustion in co-infected individuals. Targeting ICMs with pharmacological immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) offers a promising approach for better clinical management of co-infected individuals.