In vitro characterization of purified human thymic dendritic cells infected with human immunodeficiency virus type 1

In the thymus, dendritic cells (DC) are functionally associated with thymocytes and are recognized to play a major role in the intrathymic differentiation of T cells. Several studies have previously investigated the role of DC during HIV-infection, but the status of thymic DC in HIV-1 pathogenesis remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the susceptibility of purified human thymic DC to HIV-1 infection in vitro. HIV-1 was not detected in cell-free supernatants collected from HIV-infected DC. However, these cultures were shown to transmit HIV-1 infection since coculture with permissive MT4 cells resulted in virus production. The exposure of DC in culture to HIV-1 was shown to promote severe DC morphological changes and killing. We also found that one or several heat labile soluble cytotoxic agents present in the HIV-1-infected DC supernatant mediated the killing of thymocytes. Our observations raise the possibility that (1) the HIV-1-induced DC killing, (2) the capacity of DC to transmit viral infection, and/or (3) the release of HIV-1-mediated cytotoxic agent(s) from DC may contribute to AIDS pathogenesis in vivo.