title: Identification of attenuated variants of HIV-1 circulating recombinant form 01_AE that are associated with slow disease progression due to gross genetic alterations in the nef/long terminal repeat sequences.
abstract: We identified an unusual case of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection in a patient (GM43) who exhibited a persistently low antibody response and undetectable viral load during a 5-year follow-up period. GM43 harbored HIV-1 circulating recombinant form 01_AE with gross deletions in the nef/long terminal repeat (LTR) region. The sizes of the deletions increased progressively from 84 to >400 bp during the 5-year period. GM43 appeared to have acquired defective variants from her husband. The genetic alterations in the nef/LTR region were remarkably similar to those that have been reported in slow progressors (such as the slow progressors in the Sydney Blood Bank Cohort). The present study is the first report of slow disease progression due to gross genetic alterations in the nef/LTR region in a person infected with an HIV-1 non-subtype B strain.
authors.affiliation: Division of Microbiology, Kanagawa Prefectural Institute of Public Health, Japan.
authors.forename: Makiko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kondo
authors.forename: Takako
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shima
authors.forename: Masako
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nishizawa
authors.forename: Koji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sudo
authors.forename: Shinya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Iwamuro
authors.forename: Takeshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Okabe
authors.forename: Yutaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takebe
authors.forename: Mitsunobu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Imai
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000914:Antibodies, Viral / Q000097:blood; D001483:Base Sequence; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D015754:Genes, nef / Q000235:genetics*; D014644:Genetic Variation; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000821:virology*; D016325:HIV Long Terminal Repeat / Q000235:genetics*; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D019562:Viral Load; D014774:Virulence
chemical_list: D000914:Antibodies, Viral