final program.qxd - Parallels Plesk Panel

PP 1.16
Low performance of HIV-1 serotyping in high HIV epidemic geographical areas
L. Tavoschi ( 1 ), D. Bernasconi ( 1 ), M. Chiappi ( 1 ), C. Galli ( 3 ), B. Suligoi ( 2 ), E. Salvi ( 1 ),
Cissy Kityo ( 4 ), B. Ensoli ( 1 ) and S. Buttò ( 1 )
1
National AIDS Center, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy;
2
Dipartment of Infectious, Parasitic and Immuno Mediated Diseases, Parassitarie e
Immunomediate, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy;
3
Abbott Diagnostic Division, Rome, Italy;
4
Joint Clinical Research Center, Kampala, Uganda
Objectives
Investigation on HIV subtypes distribution is essential for the knowledge of the epidemic
spread. In developing countries and, in particular, in sub-Saharan Africa, which is the
hardest-hit region, the extreme HIV heterogeneity is a major obstacle for both the evaluation
of the impact of antiretroviral therapies and the development of an effective vaccine against
HIV/AIDS. Since serotyping has been proposed as a rapid, simple and inexpensive method
for the study of the geographical distribution of various HIV-1 strains, we investigated the
performance of this assay in Uganda, a geographical area with high HIV epidemic.
Methods
We examined 148 repository HIV positive serum samples from 118 Ugandan individuals.
For all the 118 participants the date of seroconversion was estimated as the midpoint
between the last negative and the first positive HIV test; the interval between the two tests
was