Fig. 1

Characterization of HIV elite controllers (ECs). Clinical profiles are presented for EC1 (a) and EC2 (b) over 7 years of HIV infection. Longitudinal measurements of CD4, viral load (VL) and CD4:CD8 ratio are represented as blue (left axis), red (right axis) and black, respectively. Green arrows indicate time-points selected for immune assays. T-cell activation profiles for EC1 (c) and EC2 (d) are shown for CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells. CD8+ T-cell activation is indicated in red and CD4+ T-cell activation in blue. Dashed lines indicate the frequency of CD38 expression and solid lines HLA-DR expression for each subset. HIV-specific T-cell responses for EC1 (e) and EC2 (f) represented as intracellular cytokine responses (IFN-γ, TNF-α and IL-2) to Gag (circle), Nef (square) and Pol (triangle) are indicated (background subtracted). CD4 (blue lines) and CD8 (red lines) responses are indicated. The horizontal black dashed line indicates the cut-off for a positive response (0.05% of T-cells). The grey shaded area on the graphs indicates where VL was lower than the detectable limit of the assay. The red vertical dashed line in all graphs indicates the estimated time of HIV infection