A sudden epidemic of HIV type 1 among injecting drug users in the former Soviet Union: identification of subtype A, subtype B, and novel gagA/envB recombinants.

Autor: Bobkov A; The D.I. Ivanovsky Institute of Virology, Moscow, Russia., Kazennova E, Selimova L, Bobkova M, Khanina T, Ladnaya N, Kravchenko A, Pokrovsky V, Cheingsong-Popov R, Weber J
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: AIDS research and human retroviruses [AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses] 1998 May 20; Vol. 14 (8), pp. 669-76.
DOI: 10.1089/aid.1998.14.669
Abstrakt: The former Soviet Union republics have experienced an explosive human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) epidemic among injecting drug users (IDUs), consisting mainly of subtype A viruses originated from a point source (Bobkov et al.: AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses 1997;13:1195-1201). To determine whether new HIV-1 subtypes have entered the IDU population, 46 samples derived from IDUs in Russia (n = 39) and the Ukraine (n = 7) were genotyped by heteroduplex mobility assay (HMA). It was shown that 83% of IDU HIV-1 strains found in both countries belong to genetic subtype A. However, env subtype B was also found in 17% of cases. The sequence data showed a marked intrasubtype homogeneity of HIV-1 (the average means of interpatient genetic distance were 1.1 and 1.7% [in the gag gene] or 1.8 and 2.3% [in the env gene] for subtype A and subtype B, respectively), confirming the hypothesis of a point source of virus for each subtype variant. Moreover, recombinant gagA/envB variants originating from those two strains were also found in two samples collected in the Kaliningrad region of Russia. In conclusion, our results suggest that two strains of HIV-1 belonging to different genetic subtypes, A and B, as well as gagA/envB recombinants between genomes of these strains, are now circulating simultaneously among IDUs in the former Soviet Union.
Databáze: MEDLINE