Variability of the HIV reverse transcriptase (RT) and protease (PR) genes has been used as indicators of drug resistance and as a mean to evaluate phylogenetic relationships among circulating virus. However, these studies have been carried in HIV mono-infected populations. The goal of this study was to evaluate, for the first time, the HIV PR and RT sequences from HIV/HBV and HIV/HCV co-infected patients. HIV PR and RT genes were amplificated and sequenced to resistance analysis. The bioinformatics analysis was performed to infer about sequences clustering and molecular evolution. The results showed that the most frequent amino acid substitutions in RT were L214F (67.6%), I135T (55.9%), and in PR was V15I (41.2%). The molecular clock analysis showed that the HIV circulating in co-infected patients were separated in two clusters in the years 1999–2000. Some patients included as HIV mono-infected according patients’ medical records and inside the co-infected cluster were, in fact, co-infected by PCR analysis. Analysis of the decision trees showed susceptibility to lamivudine and emtricitabine were important attribute to characterize co-infected patients. In conclusion, the results obtained in this study suggest, for the first time, that HIV RT and PR genes variability could be a genetic biomarker to coinfection.

Introduction:In this study, we evaluated hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human immunodefi ciency virus (HIV) -platelet interactions in vitro as well as human platelets antigen (HPA) polymorphisms. Methods: Platelets were obtained from 100 healthy HPA-genotyped volunteer donors and incubated with HIV or HCV. The viral load after in vitro exposure was detected. Results: The viral load in the platelets after exposure to the virus was higher in the HIV exposure than in the HCV exposure. Conclusions: HIV-platelet ligation could be more effi cient than HCV-platelet interaction. Further, the HPA-1b allele seems to infl uence the interaction of platelets with HCV.