Abstract
Recent epidemiological data and projections indicate that HIV infection will spread rapidly in India. An allele Δccr5 of the β-chemokine receptor gene CCR5 has been found to confer protection against HIV-1. We find that this protective allele is absent in most ethnic populations of India, except some populations of the northern and western regions where this allele may have been introduced by Caucasian gene flow. The implications of this finding are discussed in the light of increasing HIV prevalence in India.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the study participants and to our various collaborators who have helped us in the collection of blood samples. This study was supported in part by a grant from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.
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Majumder, P., Dey, B. Absence of the HIV-1 protective Δccr5 allele in most ethnic populations of India. Eur J Hum Genet 9, 794–796 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5200705
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5200705
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