Characteristics of HIV-1 non-B subtype infections in Northwest Poland

✍ Scribed by Miłosz Parczewski; Magdalena Leszczyszyn-Pynka; Dorota Bander; Anna Urbańska; Grzegorz Stańczak; Anna Boroń-Kaczmarska

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 280 KB
• Volume: 82
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0146-6615
• DOI: 10.1002/jmv.21797

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The number of non‐B subtype HIV‐1 infections in Europe has been increasing even though major regional differences have been observed. This trend was investigated in northwestern Poland using sequence and epidemiological data from a cohort of 102 HIV‐1‐infected patients from Szczecin, Poland. HIV‐1 subtypes were defined by phylogenetic analysis of viral reverse transcriptase‐ and protease‐partial coding regions, and results were compared with online subtyping by Standford and REGA tools. Subtype analysis using on‐line subtyping methods produced varying results if compared to phylogenesis, with concordant variant assignment obtained for 98% (100/102) of sequences by Stanford and 85% (87/102) by REGA. In the population studied, non‐B subtype infections comprised 21% of the infections and consisted of subtype D (57%, n = 12), CRF01_AE (19%, n = 4), A and C clades (9.5%, n = 2), and the CRF13_cpx recombinant isolate (4.8%, n = 1). Patients carrying non‐B subtypes were predominantly heterosexuals with high percentage (57%) of women observed in the group. All HIV‐1 non‐B women were Caucasian with majority (83%) of infections acquired in Poland; however, among 12 travelers included in the study a higher proportion of non‐B infections was noted (50%, P = 0.01). Moreover, lower baseline lymphocyte CD4 counts (P = 0.01), higher baseline HIV‐1 viremia (P = 0.08), and a more advanced stage of the disease (P = 0.03) were observed among individuals infected with non‐B subtypes. The data indicated that the proportion of HIV‐1 non‐B subtype infections was higher than previously reported in Poland consisting of a high subtype D prevalence. Furthermore, subtype D transmission occurred primarily between heterosexual Caucasian individuals from this region. J. Med. Virol. 82:1306–1313, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.