Short communication: molecular epidemiology of HIV type 1 infection in northern Greece (2009-2010): evidence of a transmission cluster of HIV type 1 subtype A1 drug-resistant strains among men who have sex with men.
A prospective molecular epidemiology study of HIV-1 infection was conducted in newly diagnosed and antiretroviral-naive patients in Northern Greece between 2009 and 2010 using a predefined enrolling strategy. Phylogenetic trees of the pol sequences obtained in this study with reference sequences indicated that subtypes B and A1 were the most common subtypes present and accounted for 44.9% and 42.9%, respectively, followed by subtype C (3.1%), CRF02_AG (4.1%), CRF04_cpx (2.0%), and subtypes CRF01_01, F1, and G (1.0%). A high rate of clustered transmission of subtype A1-resistant strains to reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors was observed among men having sex with men. Indeed, 15 out of 17 study subjects (88.2%) infected with transmitted drug resistance (TDR) strains were implicated in transmission clusters, 10 of whom (66.7%) were men who have sex with men (MSM), and were also infected with subsubtype A1 strains. The main cluster within subtype A1 (I) included eight men reporting having sex with men from Thessaloniki infected with dual-class RT-resistant strains carrying both T215C and Y181C mutations.
1 AIDS National Reference Laboratory of Northern Greece, Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki , Thessaloniki, Greece .
Zoi-Anna
ZA
Antoniadou
Ioanna
I
Kousiappa
Lemonia
L
Skoura
Dimitris
D
Pilalas
Simeon
S
Metallidis
Pavlos
P
Nicolaidis
Nicolaos
N
Malisiovas
Leondios G
LG
Kostrikis
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D018562:Disease Transmission, Infectious; D024882:Drug Resistance, Viral; D005260:Female; D005838:Genotype; D006115:Greece / Q000453:epidemiology; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000635:transmission* / Q000821:virology; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000187:drug effects / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D018451:Homosexuality, Male; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011446:Prospective Studies; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017385:Sequence Homology; D055815:Young Adult; D054302:pol Gene Products, Human Immunodeficiency Virus / Q000235:genetics
D054302:pol Gene Products, Human Immunodeficiency Virus