Balakrishnan, Pachamuthu

Ranga, Udaykumar

Sharma, Shilpee

Solomon, Suniti

BMC Infectious Diseases

English

PubMed

Shilpee Sharma

Pachamuthu Balakrishnan

Suniti Solomon

Udaykumar Ranga

Crossref

A prospective analysis of viral immune escape in the chronic phase of the subtype C HIV-1 infections of India

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POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access
A prospective analysis of viral immune escape in
the chronic phase of the subtype C HIV-1
infections of India
Shilpee Sharma1, Pachamuthu Balakrishnan2, Suniti Solomon2, Udaykumar Ranga1*
From First International Science Symposium on HIV and Infectious Diseases (HIV SCIENCE 2012)
Chennai, India. 20-22 January 2012
Background
HIV-1 is capable of evading CTL immune response
through mutations in residues both within the epitopes
and in sequences flanking the epitopes leading to viral
diversity - a major obstacle for vaccine design. The pre-
sent study aims at identifying the HLA-restricted CTL
escape mutations primarily in the asymptomatic phase,
and examining a correlation between such mutations
and disease progression.
Methods
In a prospective study, a cohort of select seropositive
drug-naive subjects categorized into one of three clinical
groups (long-term non-progressors, regular progressors
and rapid progressors), based on the archived clinical
records at YRG CARE, are being monitored for two
years with repeated sampling at 6-month intervals. The
phylogenetic analysis of the gag sequences was inferred
using the Neighbour-Joining method in MEGA 5 to
monitor viral evolution and to study CTL escape. ELI-
SPOT will be used for mapping of the immunodomi-
nant CTL epitopes in gag with an emphasis on
identifying a possible correlation between such immune
responses and disease progression.
Results
Twenty plasmid clones of gag have been sequenced
from ten patients each at the base level. Escape mutants
in several known immunodominant CTL epitopes have
been identified in many of the subjects. The viral iso-
lates phylogenetically clustered with the reference
subtype C sequences. Additionally, multiple sequences
from individual viral isolates clustered together indicat-
ing genetic-relatedness. Sequence analysis with REGA
HIV-1 Subtyping Tool further confirmed the subtype C
identity of all the viral isolates.
Conclusion
The preliminary data are suggestive of viral escape in
the chronic phase of the viral infection.
Author details
1Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, HIV-AIDS
Laboratory, Bengaluru, India. 2YRG Centre for AIDS Research and Education,
Chennai, India.
Published: 4 May 2012
doi:10.1186/1471-2334-12-S1-P25
Cite this article as: Sharma et al.: A prospective analysis of viral immune
escape in the chronic phase of the subtype C HIV-1 infections of India.
BMC Infectious Diseases 2012 12(Suppl 1):P25.
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* Correspondence: udaykumar@jncasr.ac.in
1Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, HIV-AIDS
Laboratory, Bengaluru, India
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Sharma et al. BMC Infectious Diseases 2012, 12(Suppl 1):P25
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/12/S1/P25
© 2012 Sharma et al; licensee 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.


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A prospective analysis of viral immune escape in the chronic phase of the subtype C HIV-1 infections of India

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