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Absence of coreceptor switch with disease progression in human immunodeficiency virus infections in India
D Cecilia1, S S Kulkarni, S P Tripathy
1National Institute of Virology, Pune, 411001, India. cdayaraj@hotmail.com
Abstract:
The envelope glycoprotein of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) utilizes CD4 as a receptor and CCR5 and/or CXCR4 as coreceptor to gain entry into the cell. The CCR5-tropic viruses, observed early in infection, could be important in transmission and the CXCR4-tropic viruses, observed late, may play an important role in disease progression. Viruses from 40 HIV-positive, asymptomatic or symptomatic individuals in India were isolated. Of 40 isolates 39 used CCR5. Thirty-three isolates were subtype C, 3 isolates were subtype A, and 4 isolates were HIV-2. Only 1 HIV-2 isolate, from a symptomatic individual, was dualtropic. Therefore, a majority of isolates from India belonged to subtype C and all the isolates utilized CCR5 exclusively irrespective of HIV disease status.