ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2007
Variation in HIV-1 set-point viral load: epidemiological analysis and an evolutionary hypothesis.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 228 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
228 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Impact of viral load and the duration of primary infection on HIV transmission: systematic review and meta-analysis.AIDS (London, England) · 2014Pooled it
- Is the virulence of HIV changing? A meta-analysis of trends in prognostic markers of HIV disease progression and transmission.AIDS (London, England) · 2012Pooled it
- HIV treatment as prevention: optimising the impact of expanded HIV treatment programmes.PLoS medicine · 2012Pooled it
- The role of coinfections in HIV epidemic trajectory and positive prevention: a systematic review and meta-analysis.AIDS (London, England) · 2011Pooled it
- Identification of antibody targets associated with lower HIV viral load and viremic control.PloS one · 2024Trial
- Population-level analysis of natural control of HIV infection in Zambia and South Africa: HPTN 071 (PopART).Journal of the International AIDS Society · 2023Trial
- Circumcision status at HIV infection is not associated with plasma viral load in men: analysis of specimens from a randomized controlled trial.BMC infectious diseases · 2018Trial
- Temporal trends in viral setpoint and peak CD4 + cell count soon after HIV-1 seroconversion.AIDS (London, England) · 2026Observational
- Low Awareness of HIV Status Among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Vietnam Despite Significant Improvements in the HIV Treatment Cascade.AIDS and behavior · 2026Article
- Article
- Atlas of HIV cis-regulatory elements reveals extensive transcriptional variation across clades, isolates, and within individuals.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Attenuation of HIV severity by slightly deleterious mutations can explain the long-term trajectory of virulence evolution.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Complex interactions in the life cycle of a simple parasite shape the evolution of virulence.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Uncovering the impact of infection routes on within-host MPXV dynamics: Insights from a mathematical modeling study.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Quantifying prevalence and risk factors of HIV multiple infection in Uganda from population-based deep-sequence data.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Article
- Residence-colonization trade-off and niche differentiation enable coexistence of Escherichia coli phylogroups in healthy humans.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Longitudinal Viral Load Clustering for People With HIV Using Functional Principal Component Analysis.AIDS research and treatment · 2025Article
- The genetic architecture of HIV-1 virulence.Virus evolution · 2025Article
- Evidence for circulation of high-virulence HIV-1 subtype B variants in the United Kingdom.Virus evolution · 2025Article
168 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The natural course of HIV-1 infection is characterized by a high degree of heterogeneity in viral load, not just within patients over time, but also between patients, especially during the asymptomatic stage of infection. Asymptomatic, or set-point, viral load has been shown to correlate with both decreased time to AIDS and increased infectiousness. The aim of this study is to characterize the epidemiological impact of heterogeneity in set-point viral load. By analyzing two cohorts of untreated patients, we quantify the relationships between both viral load and infectiousness and the duration of the asymptomatic infectious period. We find that, because both the duration of infection and infectiousness determine the opportunities for the virus to be transmitted, this suggests a trade-off between these contributions to the overall transmission potential. Some public health implications of variation in set-point viral load are discussed. We observe that set-point viral loads are clustered around those that maximize the transmission potential, and this leads us to hypothesize that HIV-1 could have evolved to optimize its transmissibility, a form of adaptation to the human host population. We discuss how this evolutionary hypothesis can be tested, review the evidence available to date, and highlight directions for future research.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.