Prevalence of R5 and X4-Tropic strains in HIV-1 Infected bangladeshi population

Abstract

PurposeHIV uses CD4 as main receptor to infect a cell. Also, it uses coreceptor (CCR5 or CXCR4) as a surrogate marker. In Bangladesh, nearly 50% of the identified strains are subtype C. In this study, we have examined viral genotypic co-receptor tropism in Bangladesh People Living with HIV (PLHIV). MethodsWe identified a co-receptor on V3 sequences of the HIV env gene. The online Geno2pheno tools was used. The threshold limit of a 10% false-positive rate was used. Samples from HIV-infected individuals aged 5–50 years were taken from which we obtained a good quality of 55 sequences. The viral tropism frequency in different circulating Bangladeshi HIV subtypes was analyzed using SPSS. ResultsAbove two third of the samples, (61.8%; 34 of 55) were HIV-1 subtype C. We identified 83.6% (46 of 55) of the samples were R5tropic, 16.4% (9 of 55) as X4 tropic, HIV-1 strains. The R5 tropic strains among key population infected with different HIV-1 subtype in the Bangladeshi population is common. ConclusionsThis finding can help with suitable drug selection in reverse-transcriptase (RT) or protease (PR) drug-resistance strains.