title: Identification of HIV type 2 subtype B transmission in East Asia.
abstract: We isolated an HIV-2 strain (01JP-IMCJ/KR020) from a Korean patient who has lived in Japan for the past 6 years. He was infected with HIV-2 through heterosexual contacts in either Korea or Japan. The phylogenetic analyses based on the near full-length nucleotide sequence revealed that 01JP-IMCJ/KR020 belongs to HIV-2 subtype B cluster with high bootstrap support. This isolate harbors a 13-nucleotide insertion upstream of the NF-KB site, which is one of the sequence signatures specific to HIV-2 subtype B. This represents the first report of HIV-2 subtype B transmission in East Asia; three cases of HIV-2 subtype A infection have been reported in Korea in 1991-1998. This suggests that at least sporadic transmission of HIV-2, including both subtypes A and B, occurs in East Asia. It is necessary to keep monitoring HIV-2 to see whether there is an increasing trend toward HIV-2 infection in this particular area in Asia.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Molecular Virology and Epidemiology, AIDS Research Center, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Shigeru
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kusagawa
authors.forename: Yuko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Imamura
authors.forename: Akira
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Yasuoka
authors.forename: Hiroo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hoshino
authors.forename: Shin-Ichi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Oka
authors.forename: Yutaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takebe
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001483:Base Sequence; D005202:Asia, Eastern / Q000453:epidemiology; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000635:transmission* / Q000821:virology; D015498:HIV-2 / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA