History and origin of the HIV-1 subtype C epidemic in South Africa and the greater southern African region.

ABSTRACT: HIV has spread at an alarming rate in South Africa, making it the country with the highest number of HIV infections. Several studies have investigated the histories of HIV-1 subtype C epidemics but none have done so in the context of social and political transformation in southern Africa. There is a need to understand how these processes affects epidemics, as socio-political transformation is a common and on-going process in Africa. Here, we genotyped strains from the start of the epidemic and applied phylodynamic techniques to determine the history of the southern Africa and South African epidemic from longitudinal sampled data. The southern African epidemic's estimated dates of origin was placed around 1960 (95% HPD 1956-64), while dynamic reconstruction revealed strong growth during the

SUBMITTER: Wilkinson E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4648088 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature