Abstract
The article reviewed in this article originally appeared in Proc. of the Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Sept. 1990; 87: 7245-49. The experimental evidence reported in this paper demonstrates that continuous exposure of HIV-infected T-lymphocyte cell culture lines to non-cytotoxic ascorbate concentrations resulted in significant inhibition of both virus replication in chronically infected cells and multinucleated giant-cell formation in acutely infected cells. There were no significant changes in metabolic activity between control cultures and those exposed to ascorbate at 75, 100 and 150 mu g/ml. The suppression of ascorbate on HIV-1 production could not be ascribed to general inhibition or protein synthesis, and inhibition of virus replication was not due to any cytotoxic effect of ascorbate.