Molecular diversity of HIV-1 in Croatia
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-S4-O5
© Grgic et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014
Published: 29 May 2014
Keywords
Croatia is a small southeastern European country with a low prevalence of HIV infection and a centralized system of clinical care. The cumulative number of HIV infections in the period 1985-2013 was 1,102. The aim of this study was to analyze the distribution of HIV-1 subtypes in Croatia.
The study enrolled 356 HIV-infected patients (86.2% males) receiving clinical care at the Croatian Reference Center for HIV/AIDS in the period 2000-2013. The patients were classified into three groups based on the year of genotyping and entrance to clinical care (2000-2005, 2006-2010 and 2011-2013). Population-based sequencing of the part of pol gene was performed by using TRUGENE® HIV-1 Genotyping System. HIV-1 subtypes were determined by HIV REGA Subtyping Tool.
Subtype B was detected in 279 of 356 patients (78.37%). In the period 2000-2005, a total of 28.3% (47/166) of patients were infected with non-B subtypes. More recently, percentages of non-B subtypes decreased to 14.9% (20/134 patients, 2006-2010) and 17.8% (10 of 56 patients, 2011-2013). Non-B subtypes were detected in 27 of 49 (55.1%) HIV-infected women. A total of 93.1% (175/188) men who have sex with men (MSM) patients were infected with subtype B.
The majority of HIV-1 infections in Croatia can be attributed to subtype B, particularly among MSM. Non-B subtypes are associated mainly with heterosexual transmission.
Authors’ Affiliations
Copyright
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
