Environmental Public Health Commons^™

The Semen Microbiome And Its Relationship With Local Immunology And Viral Load In Hiv Infection, Cindy M. Liu, Brendan J.W. Osborne, Bruce A. Hungate, Kamnoosh Shahabi, Sanja Huibner, Richard Lester, Michael G. Dwan, Colin Kovacs, Tania L. Contente-Cuomo, Erika Benko, Maliha Aziz, Lance B. Price

Environmental and Occupational Health Faculty Publications

Semen is a major vector for HIV transmission, but the semen HIV RNA viral load (VL) only correlates moderately with the blood VL. Viral shedding can be enhanced by genital infections and associated inflammation, but it can also occur in the absence of classical pathogens. Thus, we hypothesized that a dysregulated semen microbiome correlates with local HIV shedding. We analyzed semen samples from 49 men who have sex with men (MSM), including 22 HIV-uninfected and 27 HIV-infected men, at baseline and after starting antiretroviral therapy (ART) using 16S rRNA gene-based pyrosequencing and quantitative PCR. We studied the relationship of semen …