A manuscript in press describes initial findings of the International Meta-analysis of HIV Host Genetics. This report presents results from a comprehensive meta-analysis of individual participants' data (MIPD) contributed by 19 groups of investigators from the USA, Europe, and Australia. Persons with either the CCR5-delta 32 or CCR2-64I alleles have a significantly decreased risk of progression to AIDS and death and have lower levels of HIV-1 viremia after seroconversion. However, no consistent protective effect was seen for subjects homozygous for the SDF-1 3'A allele. We are now analyzing data from seroconverters to assess whether the effects of the CCR5-delta 32 or CCR2-64I variants vary over the course of the disease. Preliminary results suggest that CCR2-64I confers strong early protection. A manuscript was submitted for publication describing the costs and benefits of an MIPD versus a meta-analysis of the published literature (MPL). A manuscript was published describing trends in the level of HIV virus in serum or plasma (viral load) among HIV-infected children in the Multicenter Hemophilia Cohort Study. Early virus loads were lower than those previously observed in vertically infected infants, but the trends in virus loads were similar to what has been reported for adults. A manuscript is in press describing results from the AIDS-Cancer Match Registry Study. This analysis assessed the risk of cancer after AIDS among persons with and without Kaposi's Sarcoma, a marker for infection with Kaposi's Sarcoma Herpes Virus (KSHV). Based on follow-up of 189,000 persons with AIDS, the findings indicate that KSHV is involved in the pathogenesis of some immunoblastic lymphomas. A manuscript was published describing the application of latent class analysis to estimate the true sensitivity and specificity of three assays to detect KSHV; the K8.1 enzyme immunoassay (EIA) was shown to have consistently high sensitivity and specificity across three populations.
