The reach project of the adolescent medicine HIV/AIDS research network: Design, methods, and selected characteristics of participants

Assessment of Thymic Activity in Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Negative and -Positive Adolescents by Real-Time PCR Quantitation of T-Cell Receptor Rearrangement Excision Circles

“…In a similar analysis, Steffens et al found that coding joint TREC were more numerous in CD4 ϩ T cells than in either PBMC or CD8 ϩ T cells from HIV-infected and uninfected adults (33). However, comparisons of these data to those presented by Chavan et al (7) It was once commonly accepted that thymic involution begins at sexual maturity and is completed by midlife (17,28,34). In agreement with this notion, one recent report described a decline of 1 to 1.5 log 10 units in TREC number in the third decade of life compared to that in childhood and adolescence (40).…”

“…Biomedical and behavioral data were collected from these youths at 15 different clinical sites in 13 U.S. cities. Characteristics of the cohort, recruitment and eligibility criteria, and study design are reported in detail elsewhere (28,39). The youngest HIV-seronegative subjects who had a minimum of five specimens collected during study visits conducted at 6-month intervals were selected for this study.…”

“…Stability of TREC. In order to better understand thymic activity during adolescence, we measured TREC in PBMC obtained every 6 months for up to 4 years from 11 female and 5 male HIV-seronegative individuals from the REACH Cohort (13,14,28,39) (Fig. 2).…”

Human Leukocyte Antigen Class I Supertypes and HIV-1 Control in African Americans

“…The details of the study design and data structure of each entire cohort have been described elsewhere (31,41,45). African American race/ ethnicity was self-reported by all study participants in a questionnaire with four race/ethnic categories (i.e., African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, and Native American).…”

CCL3L1 and CCL4L1: variable gene copy number in adolescents with and without human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection

“…The characteristics of this cohort have been described previously. 47,48 Between 1996 and 2000, data were collected at quarterly intervals for as many as 550 subjects, of whom 530 had a sample suitable for DNA extraction. Subjects selected for this study included 184 HIV-1 seronegatives (population controls) and 227 HIV-1 seropositives (161 African Americans and 66 others) with known history of exposure to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and up to four measurements of HIV-1 viral load (RNA copies per ml) in plasma and corresponding CD4 þ T-cell counts during ART-free þ T-cell counts at multiple ART-free intervals allowed the classification of three distinct disease groups (37 controllers, 134 intermediates and 56 noncontrollers) among HIV-1 seropositives.…”