Time lag insensitive approach for estimating HIV-1 transmission direction

Date

2012

Authors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Wolters Kluwer Health

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Identifying the direction of transmission in transmission pairs is important both for forensic investigations and for the monitoring of HIV epidemics, however, reliable methods are not yet available due to the long time lag between infection and sampling in most real cases. DESIGNS: Based on bottleneck effect and coreceptor switching, we aimed at identifying an estimator from sequences of viral gp120 proteins to determine transmission direction between transmission pairs. The estimator should be changed with HIV transmission but was independent of disease progression in an individual. METHODS: Here, we present a novel and reliable approach for identifying transmission direction. We derived a set of conserved patterns, called common patterns, from the sequences of viruses, which differed in their coreceptor usage. The number of unique common patterns in viral sequences decreased with transmission but remained almost constant with the progress of disease in an individual. We used this number as an estimator to determine transmission direction in 73 transmission pairs for which the transmission direction was already known. RESULTS: Our method predicted transmission direction with an accuracy of up to 94.5%. Of greater importance, our approach was not influenced by time lags between infection and sampling, and even transmission direction for transmission pairs with long time lags ranging from 2 years to more than 18 years were correctly determined. CONCLUSION: Our approach for accurately determining transmission direction between transmission pairs is irrespective of the time lag between infection and sampling, which means a promising applications prospect.

Description

Keywords

CRIMINAL CASES, HIV EPIDEMICS, HIV TRANSMISSION DIRECTION, PATTERNS, SAMPLING TIME LAGS, TRANSMISSION PAIRS, DISEASE CONTROL

Citation

Jing Yang, Meng Ge, & Xian-Ming Pan (2012). A time lag insensitive approach for estimating HIV-1 transmission direction. AIDS, 26, 921-928.doi:10.1097/QAD.0b013e3283536b89

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10625/51664

DOI

Collections

IDRC Research Results / Résultats de recherches du CRDI
2010-2019 / Années 2010-2019
Modelling and controlling infectious diseases / Se servir de la modélisation pour lutter contre les maladies infectieuses