Evidence for a "Founder Effect" among HIV-infected injection drug users (IDUs) in Pakistan

BMC Infectious Diseases

Research Article

Mohammad A Rai¹  Syed H Ali¹  Arish Rehman¹  Suhail Khoja¹  Saeed Khan¹  Shahana U Kazmi²  Vivek R Nerurkar³  Richard Yanagihara⁴ 

[1] Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan;Department of Microbiology, University of Karachi, Pakistan;Retrovirology Research Laboratory, Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology, Hawaii, USA;Retrovirology Research Laboratory, Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology, Hawaii, USA;Department of Pediatrics, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 96813, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA;

关键词: Human Immunodeficiency Virus;    Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection;    Injection Drug User;    Human Immunodeficiency Virus Prevalence;    Injection Drug User;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2334-10-7

 received in 2009-02-13, accepted in 2010-01-12,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundWe have previously reported a HIV-1 subtype A infection in a community of injection drug users (IDUs) in Karachi, Pakistan. We now show that this infection among the IDUs may have originated from a single source.MethodsPhylogenetic analysis was performed of partial gag sequences, generated using PCR, from 26 HIV-positive IDU samples.ResultsOur results showed formation of a tight monophyletic group with an intra-sequence identity of < 98% indicating a "founder effect". Our data indicate that the HIV-1 epidemic in this community of IDUs may have been transmitted by an HIV positive overseas contract worker who admitted to having contact with commercial sex workers during stay abroad.ConclusionSpecific measures need to implemented to control transmission of HIV infection in Pakistan through infected migrant workers.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Rai et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.