Using Primer-ID Deep Sequencing to Detect Recent Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Infection.

ABSTRACT

Intrahost viral sequence diversity can be evaluated over multiple genomic regions using next-generation sequencing (NGS) and scaled to population-level diversity to identify recent human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infection. Using Primer-ID NGS, we sequenced the reverse transcriptase (RT) and env V1-V3 regions from persons with known infection dates, and assessed the mean (π) and first quintile of pairwise diversity distributions over time. The receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (AUC) of RT and V1-V3 combined showed excellent discrimination of recent infection <9 months using π (only single transmitted variants AUC, 0.98; threshold <1.03%; sensitivity, 97%; specificity, 89%) and the first quintile (including all variants AUC, 0.90; threshold <0.60%; sensitivity, 91%; specificity, 92%).