Evaluation of Viral Genes and Host Immune Factors in HIV-1 infected patients

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