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Humans vary remarkably — 4 to 5 logs — in their viral loads during the nonsymptomatic phase of infection with HIV-1 and in the time it takes to progress to AIDS. This disparity suggests that various genetic host factors play an important role in controlling HIV-1.
A multinational team screened more than 30,000 patients with HIV-1 infection to find 486 in whom a consistent and accurate viral load had been measured on repeated occasions during the nonsymptomatic phase of infection. The investigators scanned the entire genome of each patient, using more than 550,000 markers scattered evenly throughout the genome (a technology made possible by the HapMap project [Journal Watch Nov 4 2005]). Three loci were found to explain 14% of the variance in…