| dc.description.abstract | As the HIV pandemic becomes increasingly complex and devastating in Africa,
there is need to come up with better management strategies in terms of treatment, vaccine
and better testing methods. However, this is getting hampered by the high diversity of
Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 1 (HIV -I), which is brought about by high rate of
replication and mutation. Such mutations may cause antiretroviral drug resistance if they
occur in the gene regions coding for molecular drug targets. The high rate of mutation
also leads to many viruses which are genetically related but distinguishable variants and
subtypes. In this study, molecular analysis of the protease and reverse transcriptase gene
sequences of the HIV -I in plasma samples collected from Gem in western Kenya was
done. Sequencing of these genes was done with the aim of identifying mutations and
analyzing each for antiretroviral drug resistance. Also, determination of the subtypes
based on these sequences was done. A total of 30 samples were taken for sequencing,
however, 9 of them had primer failures and therefore did not successfully sequence,
leaving only 21 samples for molecular analysis. The results showed several mutations in
these gene sequences, and analysis of each of the mutation for drug resistance showed
none to be causing resistance to any of the known classes of ARV drugs. For the
phylogenetic analysis, 16 (76.2%) of the isolates were found to be subtype A, subtype D
were 4 (19.0%), and the remaining I (4.8%) was circulating recombinant form, CRF _AD.
To verify the results, control sample was analyzed by both TruGene and ill-house
methods and both gave the same results. Since this study revealed three different HIV-I
subtypes in Gem, it would be necessary to conduct a future study to find out the effect of
these subtypes on the transmission, pathogenicity and the rate of HIV-I disease
progression in Gem, western Kenya. | en_US |
