Human Immunodeficiency Virus in Glial Cells: Reply

By now, neurological manifestations of AIDS encephalopathy, encephalitis, myelopathy, and peripheral neuropathy have been well documented, and more recently HIV has been shown to productively infect human brain cells of glial origin. Continuing studies of patients with AIDS have revealed that when the brain is infected, HIV is more abundant morphologically in the CNS than in other tissues, including circulating blood. The authors have also observed HIV in Schwann cells in a specimen from a peripheral nerve biopsy.