title: Potential Pitfalls in Estimating Viral Load Heritability.
abstract: In HIV patients, the set-point viral load (SPVL) is the most widely used predictor of disease severity. Yet SPVL varies over several orders of magnitude between patients. The heritability of SPVL quantifies how much of the variation in SPVL is due to transmissible viral genetics. There is currently no clear consensus on the value of SPVL heritability, as multiple studies have reported apparently discrepant estimates. Here we illustrate that the discrepancies in estimates are most likely due to differences in the estimation methods, rather than the study populations. Importantly, phylogenetic estimates run the risk of being strongly confounded by unrealistic model assumptions. Care must be taken when interpreting and comparing the different estimates to each other.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02143, USA; Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. Electronic address: gaberoo@mit.edu.
authors.forename: Gabriel E
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Leventhal
authors.affiliation: Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. Electronic address: sebastian.bonhoeffer@env.ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bonhoeffer
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000635:transmission* / Q000821:virology; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010802:Phylogeny; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000235:genetics*; D019562:Viral Load / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D012367:RNA, Viral
keywords: HIV; heritability; phylogenetics; set-point viral load; virus evolution