Cytotoxic T lymphocytes, or CD8+ T cells, play an important role in the control of replication of HIV. Inducing effective and durable HIV-specific CD8+ T cell responses are, therefore, a major objective in prophylactic and curative strategies for HIV infection. To evaluate such strategies, reliable immunological assays are needed that measure the capacity of CD8+ T cells to exert their effector functions and control viremia. Classical immunological assays such as interferon-γ (IFN-γ) enzyme-linked immunospot or intracellular cytokine staining measure the production of one or several effector molecules but do not actually show suppression of viral replication. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these assays do not correlate with either prevention of infection or lower viral set-points after infection. Therefore, more relevant assays are needed which directly measure the viral inhibitory activity (VIA) of CD8+ T cells and are more likely to predict success or failure of different immune interventions. The present review discusses the methodology of the VIA in detail as well as the practical implications of the several variations that have been described. We then go onto discuss existent literature on the relationship between VIA and HIV control, give an overview of examples where VIA has been induced or boosted in vivo or in vitro, and finally discuss observed associations between VIA and other immunological parameters. We conclude that while VIA is complex and laborious, it provides functional information about CD8+ T cells that no other assay can deliver.

中文翻译：

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CD8 + T细胞在HIV感染中的病毒抑制活性。

细胞毒性T淋巴细胞或CD8 + T细胞在控制HIV复制中起重要作用。因此，诱导有效和持久的HIV特异性CD8 + T细胞应答是HIV感染的预防和治疗策略的主要目标。为了评估这种策略，需要可靠的免疫测定法来测量CD8 + T细胞发挥其效应子功能和控制病毒血症的能力。经典的免疫分析方法，如干扰素-γ（IFN-γ）酶联免疫斑点或细胞内细胞因子染色，可测量一种或几种效应分子的产生，但实际上并未显示出病毒复制的抑制作用。也许不足为奇的是，这些测定与感染的预防或感染后较低的病毒设定点无关。因此，需要更多相关的检测方法来直接测量CD8 + T细胞的病毒抑制活性（VIA），并且更有可能预测不同免疫干预的成功或失败。本综述详细讨论了VIA的方法论以及已描述的几种变体的实际含义。然后，我们将讨论有关VIA与HIV控制之间关系的现有文献，概述其中已在体内或体外诱导或增强VIA的示例，最后讨论观察到的VIA与其他免疫学参数之间的关联。我们得出的结论是，虽然VIA既复杂又费力，但它提供了CD8 + T细胞的功能信息，而其他检测方法则无法提供。