Citation Information

Janes H, Herbeck JT, Tovanabutra S, Thomas R, Frahm N, Duerr A, Hural J, Corey L, Self SG, Buchbinder SP, McElrath MJ, O'Connell RJ, Paris RM, Rerks-Ngarm S, Nitayaphan S, Pitisuttihum P, Kaewkungwal J, Robb ML, Michael NL, Mullins JI, Kim JH, Gilbert PB, Rolland M (2015). HIV-1 infections with multiple founders are associated with higher viral loads than infections with single founders. Nature medicine, 21(10), 1139-41. (pubmed) (doi)

Abstract

Given the variation in the HIV-1 viral load (VL) set point across subjects, as opposed to a fairly stable VL over time within an infected individual, it is important to identify the characteristics of the host and virus that affect VL set point. Although recently infected individuals with multiple phylogenetically linked HIV-1 founder variants represent a minority of HIV-1 infections, we found–n two different cohorts–hat more diverse HIV-1 populations in early infection were associated with significantly higher VL 1 year after HIV-1 diagnosis.