Objective To investigate apoptosis after PDCD2 overexpression in Jurkat and ACH2 cell lines. Methods Jurkat and ACH2 cell lines were used in this study. PDCD2 was stably expressed in the cell lines by lentivirus infection. Apoptosis was determined by flow cytometry after 24 hours of TRAIL treatment. Results Apoptosis was not significantly increased in Jurkat or ACH2 cells stably expressing PDCD2 compared with untransfected control cells. However, compared with the control group without PDCD2 overexpression, apoptosis was significantly higher in PDCD2- Jurkat and PDCD2-ACH2 cells induced by TRAIL (P< 0.05). Conclusions PDCD2 promotes apoptosis of T cell and HIV latent-infected T cells induced by TRAIL.