Defining HIV reservoirs that rebound following suspension of ART

Studies explore the hypotheses that HIV reservoirs are maintained by: (1) Integrated proviruses that modulate gene expression to promote survival of these cells, allowing infected cells to persist by proliferation or latency; (2) HIV-specific immune responses become exhausted due to dysregulation of T-regulatory cells resulting from provirus integration; and (3) Epigenetic marks repress expression of proviral DNA, allowing infected cells to persist due to “deep” latency of proviruses.