Relatively high prevalence of drug resistance among antiretroviral-naive patients from Henan, Central China.

To elucidate the prevalence of HIV-1 subtypes and transmitted drug resistance in Henan, central China, HIV-1-positive blood samples from 187 antiretroviral-naive patients were collected in our study from August 2009 to November 2010. Subtype B' (92.0%, 172 of 187) remains the predominant HIV-1 subtype in Henan province and was prevalent in all risk populations and geographic regions. Of 98 pol sequences 67 (68.4%) harbored drug resistance mutations, and only 14 (14.3%, 14 of 98) sequences have mutations associated with significantly reduced phenotypic susceptibility to antiretroviral drugs. The unexpectedly high percentage of drug resistance in Henan province is mainly due to the prevalence of minor mutations in the protease and integrase regions, especially A71T/V and L68V/I/IM/LV. In all, we detected a relatively high prevalence of drug resistance with unique mutation distributions among antiretroviral-naive patients from Henan province.