Early development of broadly reactive HIV-1 neutralizing activity in elite neutralizers

Broadly reactive neutralizing activity (brNA) against HIV-1 is observed in 10-30% of infected individuals and generally takes 2-4 years to develop. Here, we show that two elite neutralizers, infected through injecting drug use, developed brNA around the first year postseroconversion (post-SC), whereas criteria for elite brNA were fulfilled around 30 months post-SC. These results indicate that brNA does not necessarily require multiple years to develop and they should encourage the search for vaccines that can elicit protective humoral immunity.