查看文章

Identification of recent HIV infection within populations is a public health priority for accurate estimation of HIV incidence rates and transmitted drug resistance at population level. Determining HIV incidence rates by prospective follow-up of HIV-uninfected individuals is challenging and serological assays have important limitations. HIV diversity within an infected host increases with duration of infection. We explore a simple bioinformatics approach to assess viral diversity by determining the percentage of ambiguous base calls in sequences derived from standard genotyping of HIV-1 protease and reverse transcriptase. Sequences from 691 recently infected (⩽1 year) and chronically infected (>1 year) individuals from Sweden, Vietnam and Ethiopia were analyzed for ambiguity. A significant difference (p < 0.0001) in the proportion of ambiguous bases was observed between sequences from individuals with recent …