1. Do HIV+ Rapid Progressors Show More Divergence than Non-Progressors?
Karen Klyczek, Alix Darden, Susan Godfrey, Karl Beres, and Mark Bergland

2. Hypothesis
Rapidly progressing HIV+ subjects will show more divergence in their HIV sequences between their first and last visits, compared to non-progressors.

3. Methods Study population: a cohort of IV drug users in Baltimore
-six rapid progressors - < 200 CD4 T cells/microliter (subjects 1, 3, 4, 10, 11, 15)
-three non-progressors - > 650 CD4 T cells/microliter (subjects 2, 12, 13)
Generation of phylogenetic trees: 285 bp regions of the HIV-1 env gene was amplified for all subjects. Data from Markam et al. (1998) analyzed using ClustalW (Biology Workbench)

4. Table 1. Subject parameters for HIV study.

5. Progressors

6. Progressors
Subject 3

7. Progressors
Subject #4
Visit #1

8. Progressors
Subject 10

9. Progressors
Subject 11

10. Progressors

11. Nonprogressors
Subject 2

12. Nonprogressors

13. Nonprogressors
Subject 13

14. Conclusions and Discussion
Overall, rapid progressors exhibited more divergence in their HIV sequences than non-progressors. In rapid progressors, sequences from clones isolated on their first visit tended to cluster separately from clones isolated on their last visit. In two of three non-progressors, there was less separation between sequences obtained from the first and last visits. More data from non-progressors are needed to confirm these differences.
Reference:
Markham, R.B. et al. (1998) P.N.A.S. USA 95:12568.