What do we learn from a Genome Wide Association Study performed on HIV-1 infected Long Term Non Progressors individuals?

Abstract : Previous Genome Wide Association Studies performed on Elite Controllers and control HIV-1 infected individuals have shown that the MHC locus is predominantly responsible for containing plasma viremia below a threshold of detection. Here we performed a GWAS on a cohort of 160 HIV-1 infected Caucasian Long Term Non Progressors (LTNP) from the EC-funded European-African ''GISHEAL'' Consortium in order to explore whether novel genetic factors could account for the LTNP phenotype (i.e. maintenance of CD4 T cell counts >500 cells/μl and good health conditions without therapy).