Prevalence of mutant CCR5 allele in Slovenian HIV-1-infected and non-infected individuals.

A 32 bp deletion in the CCR5 gene designated CCR5 delta 32 has been identified recently as the cellular basis for resistance to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) in some individuals which remained non-infected despite a repeated exposure to this virus. The prevalence of this deletion was examined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on 51 HIV-1-infected and 385 non-infected individuals from all parts of Slovenia. 84.4% of the the HIV-1-infected and 83.2% of the non-infected individuals were homozygous for wild type CCR5, and 19.6% and 16.3%, respectively, were heterozygous. No homozygous mutant genotype was observed among the HIV-1-infected patients. Of the non-infected individuals, 2 women (0.5%) were found to harbour the CCR5 delta 32/CCR5 delta 32 genotype only, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the lowest prevalence of this particular genotype found among Caucasians to date.