Characterization of CD4<sup>+</sup> T cell subsets and HIV susceptibility in the inner and outer foreskin of Ugandan men
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Problem Biological mechanisms of foreskin HIV acquisition are poorly defined. The inner foreskin is preferentially infected in explant models, so we hypothesized that this site would be enriched for HIV‐susceptible CD4 + T cells and proinflammatory/chemoattractant cytokines. Method of study A total of 42 HIV‐uninfected Ugandan men without genital symptoms provided foreskin tissues and swabs at the time of elective penile circumcision. The immune phenotype of foreskin‐derived CD4 + T cells and entry of a CCR5‐tropic HIV pseudovirus was characterized, and specific cytokine levels assayed by multiplexed chemiluminescent ELISA. Results Unexpectedly, outer foreskin CD4 + T cells more frequently expressed CCR5 (median 29.2% vs 22.9%, P = 0.01) and CD69 (median 36.5% vs 15%, P < 0.01), and on a per‐cell basis, HIV entry was higher. However, overall CD4 + T cell density was approximately twofold higher in the inner foreskin, and several highly susceptible T cell subsets were increased at this site, including Th17 cells (20.0% vs 14.1%, P = 0.0021). Specific pro‐inflammatory cytokine levels were also higher on the inner foreskin surface (IL‐17, IL‐8, RANTES and IL‐1β; all P < 0.05). Conclusion There was marked heterogeneity in CD4 + T cell populations and immune milieu between inner and outer foreskin tissues. Despite higher per‐cell viral entry into CD4 + T cells from the outer foreskin, the higher target cell density and enriched pro‐inflammatory cytokines of the inner foreskin suggest that this may be a preferential site for HIV acquisition.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".