Dissecting HIV Virulence: Heritability of Setpoint Viral Load, CD4+ T-Cell Decline, and Per-Parasite Pathogenicity.

ABSTRACT: Pathogen strains may differ in virulence because they attain different loads in their hosts, or because they induce different disease-causing mechanisms independent of their load. In evolutionary ecology, the latter is referred to as "per-parasite pathogenicity". Using viral load and CD4+ T-cell measures from 2014 HIV-1 subtype B-infected individuals enrolled in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study, we investigated if virulence-measured as the rate of decline of CD4+ T cells-and per-parasite pathogenicity are heritable from donor to recipient. We estimated heritability by donor-recipient regressions applied to 196 previously identified transmission pairs, and by phylogenetic mixed models applied to a phylogenetic tree inferred from HIV pol sequences. Regressing the CD4+ T-cell declines and per-paras

SUBMITTER: Bertels F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5850767 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature