HIV-1 pol Diversity among Female Bar and Hotel Workers in Northern Tanzania

Abstract

A national ART program was launched in Tanzania in October 2004. Due to the existence of multiple HIV-1 subtypes and recombinant viruses co-circulating in Tanzania, it is important to monitor rates of drug resistance. The present study determined the prevalence of HIV-1 drug resistance mutations among ART-naive female bar and hotel workers, a high-risk population for HIV-1 infection in Moshi, Tanzania. A partial HIV-1 pol gene was analyzed by single-genome amplification and sequencing in 45 subjects (622 pol sequences total; median number of sequences per subject, 13; IQR 5–20) in samples collected in 2005. The prevalence of HIV-1 subtypes A1, C, and D, and inter-subtype recombinant viruses, was 36%, 29%, 9% and 27%, respectively. Thirteen different recombination patterns included D/A1/D, C/A1, A1/C/A1, A1/U/A1, C/U/A1, C/A1, U/D/U, D/A1/D, A1/C, A1/C, A2/C/A2, CRF10_CD/C/CRF10_CD and CRF35_AD/A1/CRF35_AD. CRF35_AD was identified in Tanzania for the first time. All recombinant viruses in this study were unique, suggesting ongoing recombination processes among circulating HIV-1 variants. The prevalence of multiple infections in this population was 16% (n = 7). Primary HIV-1 drug resistance mutations to RT inhibitors were identified in three (7%) subjects (K65R plus Y181C; N60D; and V106M). In some subjects, polymorphisms were observed at the RT positions 41, 69, 75, 98, 101, 179, 190, and 215. Secondary mutations associated with NNRTIs were observed at the RT positions 90 (7%) and 138 (6%). In the protease gene, three subjects (7%) had M46I/L mutations. All subjects in this study had HIV-1 subtype-specific natural polymorphisms at positions 36, 69, 89 and 93 that are associated with drug resistance in HIV-1 subtype B. These results suggested that HIV-1 drug resistance mutations and natural polymorphisms existed in this population before the initiation of the national ART program. With increasing use of ARV, these results highlight the importance of drug resistance monitoring in Tanzania.

The evolutionary and transmission characteristic of HIV‐1 CRF07_BC in Nanjing, Jiangsu

“…HIV-1 subtypes were determined based on branching topology, clustering and split the support of the analyzed sequences and their phylogenetic relationships with HIV-1 reference sequences as described elsewhere. 19 The reference sequences were downloaded from Los Alamos HIV Databases based on the HIV-BLAST online tools (www.hiv.lanl.gov/content/sequence/BASCI_BLAST/ basic_blast.html), duplicate sequences were removed based on the sequence identifiers and accession numbers, and sequences with more than equal to 5% ambiguous nucleotides were excluded, as described in our previous work. 20 A total of 424 reference sequences were identified.…”

Low Incidence of HIV-1C Acquired Drug Resistance 10 Years after Roll-Out of Antiretroviral Therapy in Ethiopia: A Prospective Cohort Study

“…In the meantime, resistance mutations may accumulate in the viral pool and in-turn limit future treatment options [ 10 ], enhance disease progression [ 11 , 12 ] and may be transmitted to other individuals [ 10 ]. High level and complex profile of HIV-1 drug resistance mutations including Q151M and thymidine analogue mutations (TAMs) in individuals with first-line ART failure [ 8 , 9 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ] and increased prevalence of transmitted drug resistance (TDR) mutations have been reported in recent years [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ], despite more promising initial observations from Africa [ 4 , 6 , 13 ].…”