GENE variants associated with fast progression to AIDS are common in people of Indian origin. That’s the worrying finding of immunologists at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.
Narinder Mehra’s team sequenced parts of key immune genes in 2000 healthy people and 200 HIV-positive people. They found that a gene variant called HLA-B*35px, which other studies have linked to fast progression from HIV infection to AIDS, is two and half times as common as a protective variant, HLA-B*35py. A variant of the CCR2 gene that slows progression to AIDS was not present…
