부산대학교 도서관

Abstract Background Auto‐antibodies neutralizing the activity of type I interferons have been recently described in patients infected by SARS‐CoV‐2. They can be present even before the onset of the infection. Since type I interferons exert a dichotomous role in the pathogenesis of acute versus chronic HIV infection and auto‐antibodies are often found in untreated and anti‐retroviral treated HIV+ patients, we investigated whether auto‐antibodies anti‐type I interferons are present at high prevalence in those HIV+ patients with concomitant opportunistic infections (OIs). Methods The analysis of auto‐antibodies against two types of type I interferons (IFN‐α2 and IFN‐ω) was performed using the ELISA test in 60 patients chronically infected by HIV who showed concomitant infections caused by mycobacterium tuberculosis or nontuberculosis mycobacterium or with active cytomegalovirus infections. Results were compared with those of 283 SARS‐CoV‐2 swab positive patients showing mild to severe pneumonia. A chi‐square (χ2) test or the Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney test were used to compare the HIV+ patient categorical or continuous variables, respectively. Results A high prevalence of auto‐antibodies to type I interferons was found in middle‐aged HIV‐infected patients with concomitant OIs (11.6% vs. 5.3% in COVID‐19 subjects; p