Abstract:
HIV-1 infection has rapidly spread worldwide infecting more than 37.9 million
people to date, making HIV-1 one of the leading causes of mortality in infectious
diseases. Pakistan, too, has faced a shift in HIV status from ‘low prevalence, high
risk’ to ‘concentrated’ epidemic. Negligent healthcare management and research
in Pakistan has added to the plethora of disease due to insufficient modes of
diagnosis and awareness about disease, improper management of HIV positive
patients and unsatisfactory genotyping and screening of population-specific virus.
Population specific HIV-1 remains unexplored in Pakistan leading to ineffective
drug regimen, evolution of more virulent and drug resistant strains and ultimately
a rise in HIV-1 status in the country. Up-to-date, in Pakistan only partial sequence
characterization of HIV-1 has been performed leaving a huge question mark on the
actual number of circulating subtypes, recombinants and modes of their
transmission. There is a severe need to amplify, sequence and analyze whole
population-specific HIV-1 in Pakistan. This study, has therefore, primarily focused
on amplification and sequencing of HIV-1 genome within infected Pakistani
patients. In addition to viral factors in disease pathogenesis, host factors also play
a crucial role. Several host proteins either protect or render host more susceptible
to HIV-1 infection. In quest of host factors that shield host from HIV-1 infection,
differential expression of a relatively recently identified host protein FAM26F
(family with sequence similarity 26, member F) and Thioredoxin have been
checked. Differential role of these host factors in other infections has previously
been established. This study has focused on the role of these host factors in HIV
Pathogenesis. As a result of this study, viral genes (gag and pol) were successfully
amplified. Selective host immune factors i.e. FAM26F and Thioredoxin genes were
amplified and were found to express differentially in HIV positive patients in
comparison to controls
