High Frequency of Human Leukocyte Antigen-B*57:01 Allele Carriers among HIV-Infected Patients in Serbia.

ABSTRACT

Abacavir is an effective antiretroviral drug and one of the most commonly used nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors in Serbia. А percentage of the treated patients experience a potentially life-threatening hypersensitivity reaction, which was shown to be associated with the presence of the class I MHC allele, HLA-B*5701; hence genotyping for HLA-B*5701 prior to starting abacavir is nowadays recommended in international HIV treatment guidelines. In Serbia, this testing became available in 2013. This study was designed to estimate the prevalence of the HLA-B*5701 allele in Serbian HIV-1-infected patients. The presence of the HLA-B*5701 allele was analyzed in 273 HIV-1-infected patients aged 18 years or more, who were abacavir naïve. Buccal swab samples were obtained from all participants and assayed for the presence of HLA-B*5701 using a commercially available HLA-B*5701 real-time PCR kit. The presence of the HLA-B*5701 allele was found in 22 of 273 tested individuals (8%; 95% CI 5.4-11.9%). This is the first study that estimated the HLA-B*5701 prevalence among HIV-infected patients in Serbia. The very high prevalence of HLA-B*5701 found in our study strongly supports HLA-B*5701 genotyping, which should be implemented prior to the initiation of an abacavir-containing therapy to reduce the risk of potentially life-threatening hypersensitivity reactions.