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Infection with human immunodeficiency virus type 1(HIV-1) and progression to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) are controlled by both viral factors and host genetic factors. It is increasingly clear that host genetic factors such as the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles play important role in HIV-1 infection and disease progression. HLA is a region of genes on the short arm of chromosome 6, this region controls immune response functions and tissue rejection and influences susceptibility to many diseases. An increasing body of evidence is emerging regarding certain different HLA alleles involved in the susceptibility and/or resistance to HIV infection and disease progression in individuals of various ethnic backgrounds (2, 3, 6, 7). In the present study, we investigated the distribution of the HLA-A, Cw alleles in unrelated healthy Chinese Yi ethnic individuals in Sichuan province, where the prevalence of HIV infection is high, and then analyzed whether the presence of certain HLA-A, Cw alleles could be a factor affecting the susceptibility to HIV-1 infection and disease progression. The results may shed light on the pathogenesis of HIV-1 infection and will also have implications for the design and testing of candidate vaccines.
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Table 1 presents the distribution of HLA-A、-Cw alleles among 102 healthy control subjects and 68 HIV infected individuals in the Chinese Yi ethnic group; 13 and 14 alleles (or allele-groups) were detected in HLA-A and HLA-Cw loci in 102 healthy Yi ethnic Chinese. Of them, A*02, A*11, A*24 and Cw*01, Cw*07, Cw*08 were the most common alleles with an allele frequency of 0.2206, 0.3186, 0.02353 and 0.3333, 0.2500, 0.1765 respectively. No HLA-A、-Cw alleles were observed with significant allelic frequency differences between HIV infected and uninfected individuals (P>0.05), suggesting no apparent associations between HLA-A、-Cw alleles and susceptibility to HIV-1 infection in the study population.
Table 1. Distribution of HLA-A、-Cw alleles among HIV infected and uninfected individuals in Chinese Yi group
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Survivors and uninfected individuals Table 2 presents distribution of HLA-A、HLA-Cw alleles among 21 HIV positive long time survivors (LTS) and 102 control subjects in the Chinese Yi ethnic group; the prevalence of A*3601, Cw*14(01-03) and Cw*0304 was significantly higher in the LTS group compared with uninfected healthy controls with a P value of 0.016, 0.016 and 0.000 by χ2 or Fisher exact test respectively. This implicated A*3601, Cw*14(01-03) and Cw*0304 may be genetic factors associated with slow AIDS disease progression in the population.
Table 2. Distribution of HLA-A、-Cw alleles among HIV positive long time survivors and uninfected individuals in Chinese Yi group