Figure 1.

Quantification of autophagic proteins and lysosomal membrane protein 1 (LAMP-1) in postmortem brain tissue from patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Autophagic proteins and LAMP-1 were detected with Western blotting. The density of the protein bands on Western blots was analyzed and quantitated using ImageJ software (National Institutes of Health). The autophagic proteins were normalized with glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH). The ratio of the mean protein level of the brains from each group of HIV-infected patients (HIV –positive only (HIV+), n = 12 patients; HIV encephalitis [HIVE], n = 20 patients) to that of the brains from HIV-uninfected persons (HIV−; n = 8 persons) was calculated and expressed as the fold increase. A, Atg-5; B, Atg-7; C, Beclin 1; D, LAMP-1. E, Western blot bands from a representative patient’s brain. The band sizes of the proteins are 23 kDa (Atg-5), 60 kDa (Beclin 1), 71 kDa (Atg-7), and 120 kDa (LAMP-1). Error bars show the standard error of the mean.