Correlation of nonspecific antiviral activity with the ability to isolate infectious HIV-1 from Saliva

To the Editor: Despite evidence of HIV in the saliva of HIV-positive persons, oral transmission of the virus appears to be a rare event. Researchers have isolated infectious virus from only a small percentage of saliva samples from HIV-infected patients, even when virus can be isolated from peripheral-blood samples from the same persons¹,² or when HIV DNA is detected in saliva by the polymerase chain reaction³. Components of saliva can inhibit HIV⁴ and other viruses⁵. Can the presence of salivary viral inhibitors explain the low rate of recovery of HIV from oral fluids? Recently, we tested saliva.