The biological reason(s) behind persistent mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV (albeit at reduced rate compared to the preantiretroviral therapy era) in spite of the successful implementation of advanced control measures in many African countries remains a priority concern to many HIV/AIDS control programs. This may be partly due to differences in host immunogenetic factors in highly polymorphic regions of the human genome such as those encoding the killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) molecules which modulate the activities of natural killer cells. The primary aim of this study was to determine the variants of KIR genes that may have a role to play in MTCT in a cohort of infants born to HIV-infected mothers in Yaoundé, Cameroon. We designed a cross-sectional study to molecularly determine the frequencies of 15 KIR genes in 14 HIV-exposed infected (HEI), 39 HIV-exposed/uninfected (HEU), and 27 HIV-unexposed/uninfected (HUU) infants using the sequence specific primer polymerase chain reaction (PCR-SSP) method. We found that all 15 KIR genes were present in our cohort. The frequency of KIR2DL1 was significantly higher in the unexposed (control) group than in the HIV-exposed group (, ). Stratifying analysis by infection status but focusing only on exposed infants revealed that KIR2DL5, KIR2DS1, and KIR2DS5 were significantly overrepresented among the HIV-exposed/uninfected compared to infected infants (, ). Similarly, the frequencies of KIR2DS1, KIR2DS5, and KIR2DL5 were significantly different between infants perinatally infected with HIV (HIV+ by 6 months of age) and HIV-negative infants. Our study demonstrates that KIR genes may have differential effects with regard to MTCT of HIV-1.

中文翻译：

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喀麦隆 HIV 暴露婴儿的杀伤细胞免疫球蛋白样受体 (KIR)

尽管许多非洲国家成功实施了先进的控制措施，但艾滋病毒母婴传播 (MTCT) 持续存在的生物学原因（尽管与抗逆转录病毒治疗前时代相比有所降低）仍然是一个优先关注的问题许多艾滋病毒/艾滋病控制计划。这可能部分是由于人类基因组高度多态性区域中宿主免疫遗传因子的差异，例如编码调节自然杀伤细胞活性的杀伤细胞免疫球蛋白样受体 (KIR) 分子的那些。本研究的主要目的是确定在喀麦隆雅温得感染 HIV 的母亲所生婴儿队列中可能在 MTCT 中发挥作用的 KIR 基因变异。我们设计了一项横断面研究，使用序列从分子上确定 14 名 HIV 暴露感染者 (HEI)、39 名 HIV 暴露/未感染 (HEU) 和 27 名 HIV 未暴露/未感染 (HUU) 婴儿中 15 个 KIR 基因的频率特异性引物聚合酶链反应（PCR-SSP）法。我们发现所有 15 个 KIR 基因都存在于我们的队列中。的频率未暴露（对照组）的KIR2DL1显着高于 HIV 暴露组（, ）。按感染状态但仅关注暴露婴儿的分层分析显示，与受感染婴儿相比， KIR2DL5、 KIR2DS1和KIR2DS5在 HIV 暴露/未感染婴儿中的比例显着过高。, ）。类似地， KIR2DS1、 KIR2DS5和KIR2DL5的频率在围产期感染HIV的婴儿（6个月大时HIV+）和HIV阴性婴儿之间显着不同。我们的研究表明， KIR基因可能对 HIV-1 的 MTCT 产生不同的影响。