英国伦敦卫生与热带医学学院Katherine E. Atkins团队近日取得一项新成果。他们发现HIV-1基础变体的数量取决于源伴侣感染发生率。这一研究成果于2020年7月3日发表在《科学》杂志上。

为了检验源伙伴影响HIV基础变体数量的假设，他们开发了一个动力学模型，该模型使用了遗传和流行病学数据对所有现有传输对进行了校准，该源对的传播方向和感染伙伴的感染阶段已知。

他们的结果表明，与从慢性（后期）感染者那里获得感染相比，从急性（早期）感染者那里获得感染增加了多基础变异传播的风险。这项研究首次对来源伴侣特征进行了直接测试，以解释多基础菌株感染的低频现象。

据悉，在性传播过程中，个体中HIV-1的高度遗传多样性经常被降低为一种初始感染的基础变异。了解此瓶颈的驱动因素对于制定有效的感染控制策略至关重要。但在瓶颈期，对于源伙伴的重要性知之甚少。

附：英文原文

Title: Number of HIV-1 founder variants is determined by the recency of the source partner infection

Author: Ch. Julián Villabona-Arenas, Matthew Hall, Katrina A. Lythgoe, Stephen G. Gaffney, Roland R. Regoes, Stéphane Hué, Katherine E. Atkins

Issue&Volume: 2020/07/03

Abstract: During sexual transmission, the high genetic diversity of HIV-1 within an individual is frequently reduced to one founder variant that initiates infection. Understanding the drivers of this bottleneck is crucial to developing effective infection control strategies. Little is known about the importance of the source partner during this bottleneck. To test the hypothesis that the source partner affects the number of HIV founder variants, we developed a phylodynamic model calibrated using genetic and epidemiological data on all existing transmission pairs for whom the direction of transmission and the infection stage of the source partner are known. Our results suggest that acquiring infection from someone in the acute (early) stage of infection increases the risk of multiple–founder variant transmission compared with acquiring infection from someone in the chronic (later) stage of infection. This study provides the first direct test of source partner characteristics to explain the low frequency of multiple–founder strain infections.

DOI: 10.1126/science.aba5443

Source: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6499/103