Examining the dynamics of Epstein-Barr virus shedding in the tonsils and the impact of HIV-1 coinfection on daily saliva viral loads
Fig 2
Impact of HIV-1 coinfection on oral EBV replication.
A. Percentages of saliva samples that tested positive for EBV for each participant. Black dots indicate the percentage of samples that tested positive for EBV when pooling participant samples. In HIV-1 uninfected participants, the median percentage of swabs positive for EBV was 86% (range 0–100%, interquartile range (IQR) 33%), while in HIV-1 coinfected participants, the median percentage of swabs positive for EBV was 100% (range 27–100%, IQR 0%). B. Median EBV viral loads/ml in oral swabs testing positive for EBV for each participant. All graphs stratify participants by HIV-1 infection status. Coloured dots show the median value of the statistic for each participant, while bars and whiskers show the spread across participants. C. Distributions of participants’ oral swab viral loads. Each box and whisker represents the viral loads of EBV-positive oral swabs for an individual participant. The percentage of oral swabs that tested positive for EBV for each participant is indicated by the colour of the box. Of swabs that tested positive for EBV, viral loads varied over time by a median of 3.49 orders of magnitude (range 0.34–5.27, IQR 1.32) within individual HIV-1 uninfected participants and a median of 2.30 orders of magnitude (range 0.95–5.93, IQR 1.15) within individual HIV-1 coinfected participants. The red horizontal line represents the threshold of EBV detection (150 EBV copies/ml). D. Participants’ BAFF levels, CD4+ T cell counts, and HIV-1 RNA loads correlated against median EBV copies/ml of saliva.