Maraviroc intensification in patients with suppressed HIV viremia has limited effects on CD4+ T cell recovery and gene expression

• Addition of Maraviroc to stable ART improves CD4+ T cell recovery in some cohorts.
• We profiled transcriptomic changes induced by Maraviroc to explain this increase.
• Maraviroc elicited very modest changes in CD4+ T cell phenotype and transcriptome.
• Maraviroc caused immunologically favorable changes in T cell composition.

Addition of the CCR5 inhibitor Maraviroc (MVC) to ongoing antiretroviral therapy increases CD4+ T cell counts in some virologically suppressed patients with suboptimal CD4+ T cell recovery. To understand the mechanisms by which MVC elicits increases in CD4+ T cell counts, the present study was undertaken to identify host factors (i.e. genes) that are modulated and are correlated with CD4+ T cell recovery during the 24 weeks of MVC intensification in 32 subjects. Median changes of CD4+ T cell counts over 24 weeks of MVC compared to baseline were 38 cells/mm3 (p < 0.001). The median slope of CD4+ T cell recovery was 39 cells/mm3 per year before initiation of MVC and 76 cells/mm3 per year during MVC intensification, however, this increase was not statistically significant (p = 0.33). Microarray analysis (N = 31,426 genes) identified a single differentially expressed gene, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF), which was modestly (1.44-fold, p < 0.001) downregulated by MVC at week 24 compared to baseline. TNF differential expression was evaluated using an independent method of droplet digital PCR, but the difference was not significant (p = 0.6). Changes in gene expression did not correlate with CD4+ T cell recovery or any changes in the CD4+ T cell maturation, proliferation and activation phenotypes. In summary, our data suggest that modest improvements of CD4+ T cell counts during MVC intensification cannot be explained by changes in gene expression elicited by MVC. However, the modest changes in T cell composition, including reduction of the percentages of Tregs, proliferating CD4+ T cells and senescent CD8+ T cells, suggest immunologically favorable effects of MVC.