Does Haptoglobin Phenotype Impact Infection Mortality?

Abstract

Introduction: The physiological status of a subject and the pathophysiology in some diseases might be under the influence of haptoglobin phenotype. The objective of this work was to determine the relationship between mortality from HIV/AIDS infection and haptoglobin phenotype in a black population in Côte d’Ivoire. Methods: The study was conducted from a retrospective panel of 933 sera/plasma from the previous workup of the ANRS 12136 TEMPRANO trial at month 0 of patients in deferred-ART arms. For each subject, we determined the serum haptoglobin concentration, haptoglobin phenotype, and other variables from patient files from the TEMPRANO trial database. Statistical tests used were Chi-2, Fischer, and Kruskal-Wallis tests for non-gaussian distribution. We used the Kaplan-Meier method for survival analysis. Results: The distributions of the haptoglobin phenotypes were 32.3% for Hp 1-1, 39.5% for Hp 2-1 and 27.2% for Hp 2-2. The blood haptoglobin concentration seemed to be associated with haptoglobin phenotypes (p-value > 5%). The survival rate at M30 and for an extended follow-up up to 6 years was independent of haptoglobin phenotype (p-value > 5%). Besides, the haptoglobin phenotypes do not appear to be associated with CD4+ T-cell count and with hemoglobin concentration. Conclusion: Haptoglobin phenotype seems to not impact the mortality of HIV/AIDS infection. However, given the antioxidant and immunomodulatory properties of some haptoglobin phenotypes, it would be relevant to seek out possible confounding factors indirectly associated with haptoglobin phenotypes and clinical or biological infection variables.