RESEARCH ARTICLE
RNA Detection and Subtype C Assessment of HIV-1 in Infants with Diarrhea in Ethiopia
Workenesh Ayele1, Tsehai Assefa1, Sileshi Lulseged2, Belete Tegbaru1, Hiwot Berhanu1, Wegene Tamene1, Zenit Ahmedin1, Birzaf W Tensai3, Mengistu Tafesse4, Jaap Goudsmit5, Ben Berkhout7, William A Paxton7, Michel P deBaar6, Tsehaynesh Messele1, Georgios Pollakis*, 7
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 3
First Page: 19
Last Page: 23
Publisher ID: TOAIDJ-3-19
DOI: 10.2174/1874613600903010019
Article History:
Received Date: 12/12/2008Revision Received Date: 18/2/2009
Acceptance Date: 20/2/2009
Electronic publication date: 20/5/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
In the absence of chemoprophylaxis, HIV-1 transmission occurs in 13-42% of infants born to HIV-1 positive mothers. All exposed infants acquire maternal HIV-1 antibodies that persist for up to 15 months, thereby hampering diagnosis. In resource limited settings, clinical symptoms are the indices of established infection against validated laboratorybased markers. Here we enrolled 1200 children hospitalized for diarrheal and other illnesses. 20-25% of those tested, aged 15 months or younger, were found to be HIV-1-seropositive. Where sufficient plasma was available, HIV-1 RNA detection was performed using a subtype-insensitive assay, with 71.1% of seropositive infants presenting with diarrhea showing positive. From sub-typing analysis, we identified that viruses of the C’ sub-cluster were predominated amongst infants. Although this study may overestimate the HIV-1 frequency through testing symptomatic infants, diarrhea can be seen as a useful marker indicating HIV-1 infection in infants less than 15 months old.
