It is challenging to distinguish hiv viruses from evs

<p><a class="wikilink" href="/hiv/">HIV</a>-1 viruses are outward budding viruses that recruit cell membrane proteins when forming. This process is very similar to the genesis of some <a class="wikilink" href="/ev/">EV</a>s (particularly small EVs that shed from the plasma membrane). </p> <p>This makes it very difficult to use <a class="wikilink" href="/biomarkers/">biomarkers</a> to distinguish a virus-like particle from an EV. In part it is due to <a class="wikilink" href="/hiv-1_contains_cd9_and_cd63/">HIV-1 contains CD9 and CD63</a>, two classical <a class="wikilink" href="/tetraspanins/">Tetraspanins</a> to label EVs, but also because their physical properties are similar[<a class="litnote tooltip" href="/literature/@martinjaular2021">@martinjaular2021<span class="tooltiptext">Unbiased proteomic profiling of host cell extracellular vesicle composition and dynamics upon HIV-1 infection</span></a>]. </p> <p>A potential approach to overcome some of the challenges is to perform a <a class="wikilink" href="/proteomeic_profile_of_evs/">proteomeic profile of EVs</a> and study some of the differences between before/after infection.</p>