Abstract:
The aim of antiretroviral therapy is to treat HIV-1 infected individuals to reduce plasma viral load. However, prolonged treatment with antiretroviral drugs results in the selection of HIV-1 variants with resistance to antiretroviral drugs. Also, HIV-1 env gene was reported to be important for HIV-1 biological properties which are related to its pathogenesis. Therefore, this study aimed to study the effect of pressure from antiretroviral treatment which causes mutation in pol gene on env gene evolution.
The EDTA blood samples from 5 HIV-1 infected patients (CH, NA, TI, VI and YU), which were collected before and after antiretroviral drug failure, were used for detection of mutation in pol gene by genotyping assay. The most frequent of NRTI drug resistant codon mutations among these subjects were D67N (40%), M184V (40%) T215F/Y (60%) and NNRTI drug resistant codon mutations were K103N (40%), V108I (40%) and Y181C (40%).
Phylogenetic analysis of pol (RT) and env (gp120) genes of HIV-1 from 5 subjects showed that they all were HIV-1 CRF01_AE. The numbers of N-linked glycosylation sites from 5 subjects were predicted and compared between naïve and resistant strains. Additional sites of N-linked glycosylation were found in 3 subjects (CH, TI, and YU) and reductions in N-linked glycosylation were found in only 1 subject (VI). However, one subject (NA) which had the number of N-linked glycosylation sites before and after antiretroviral failure was equal but position of N-linked glycosylation sites were different. For analysis of coreceptor usage by V3 loop amino acid prediction, 4 of 5 subjects (CH, NA, TI and VI) had CCR5 coreceptor and the CXCR4 coreceptor usage was found only in YU.
Linear regression analysis was used to compare the relationship of intrapatient genetic diversity between pol (RT) and env (gp120) in 5 subjects (before and after antiretroviral drug failure). The linear regression analysis indicated that pol (RT) and env (gp120) had an inverse relationship (R=-0.766).
For the study of HIV-1 gp120 function, infectious HIV-1 molecular clones of viruses isolated from 2 subjects (NA and VI) were compared. The average p24 antigen production of the infectious virus from drug naïve clones gave higher in p24 antigen production than in drug resistant clones. These findings suggest the effect of antiretroviral drug treatment HIV-1 env gene evolution and its fitness might benefit from the monitoring of patients and designing treatment protocol.