Characterization of HIV Transmission in South-East Austria

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 11; no. 3; p. e0151478
• Main Authors: Hoenigl, Martin, Chaillon, Antoine, Kessler, Harald H., Haas, Bernhard, Stelzl, Evelyn, Weninger, Karin, Little, Susan J., Mehta, Sanjay R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 11.03.2016; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome; Adolescent; Adult; Aged; AIDS; Algorithms; Analysis; Application programming interface; Austria - epidemiology; Biology and Life Sciences; Child; Child, Preschool; Cluster Analysis; Clustering; Diagnosis; Disease transmission; Drug resistance; Environmental health; Epidemiology; Female; Filtration; Health risks; HIV; HIV infections; HIV Infections - epidemiology; HIV Infections - transmission; HIV Infections - virology; Human immunodeficiency virus; Humans; Hygiene; Infections; Infectious diseases; Internal medicine; Linkages; Male; Males; Medical diagnosis; Medicine; Medicine and Health Sciences; Mens health; Middle Aged; Mitochondrial DNA; Mutation; People and Places; Phylogenetics; Phylogeny; pol Gene Products, Human Immunodeficiency Virus - genetics; Population; Research and Analysis Methods; Retrospective Studies; Risk; Risk groups; Risk taking; Sex; Sexual behavior; Sexually transmitted diseases; Spatio-Temporal Analysis; STD; Young Adult; Austria; United States > US; California
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0151478

To gain deeper insight into the epidemiology of HIV-1 transmission in South-East Austria we performed a retrospective analysis of 259 HIV-1 partial pol sequences obtained from unique individuals newly diagnosed with HIV infection in South-East Austria from 2008 through 2014. After quality filtering, putative transmission linkages were inferred when two sequences were ≤1.5% genetically different. Multiple linkages were resolved into putative transmission clusters. Further phylogenetic analyses were performed using BEAST v1.8.1. Finally, we investigated putative links between the 259 sequences from South-East Austria and all publicly available HIV polymerase sequences in the Los Alamos National Laboratory HIV sequence database. We found that 45.6% (118/259) of the sampled sequences were genetically linked with at least one other sequence from South-East Austria forming putative transmission clusters. Clustering individuals were more likely to be men who have sex with men (MSM; p<0.001), infected with subtype B (p<0.001) or subtype F (p = 0.02). Among clustered males who reported only heterosexual (HSX) sex as an HIV risk, 47% clustered closely with MSM (either as pairs or within larger MSM clusters). One hundred and seven of the 259 sequences (41.3%) from South-East Austria had at least one putative inferred linkage with sequences from a total of 69 other countries. In conclusion, analysis of HIV-1 sequences from newly diagnosed individuals residing in South-East Austria revealed a high degree of national and international clustering mainly within MSM. Interestingly, we found that a high number of heterosexual males clustered within MSM networks, suggesting either linkage between risk groups or misrepresentation of sexual risk behaviors by subjects.