Insufficient Evidence for Rare Activation of Latent HIV in the Absence of Reservoir-Reducing Interventions

Funding: This work was supported by National Institutes of Health DP5OD019851, T15LM007079, R01GM117591, R01AI043222; Martin Delaney CARE and DARE Collaboratories (National Institutes of Health AI096113 and U19AI096109); Johns Hopkins Center for AIDS Research P30AI094189; Harvard University Center for AIDS Research P30AI060354; Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Using maximum likelihood estimation, we infer that an interstrain standard deviation in growth rate of 0.09/day can explain the observed clone ratios (dotted red line). Pinkevych et al. acknowledge this point about latency reduction as well, and we hope that this discussion can spur much-needed experimental and analytical work into understanding the rate at which latently infected cells activate and fuel viral replication.