The Russian database of HIV antiretroviral drug resistance

Abstract

The development of sequencing technologies and bioinformatic analysis made it possible to conduct molecular and epidemiological studies, in which nucleotide sequences of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are used as information added to the patient profile. From a practical perspective, studies of prevalence of HIV drug resistance (HIVDR) are of the highest significance. To promote such studies, different countries use databases that serve as repositories of genetic and epidemiological information. The Russian HIVDR database (https://hivresist.ru/) was created in 2009. Nevertheless, it was characterized by limited applicability for a long time. Since 2021, after the regulatory documents had been revised and updated, the entry of HIVDR research results into the Russian HIVDR database has been mandatory. Therefore, the priority attention has been given to upgrading the database and improving its functional capabilities. Different methods have been developed to enter clinical, epidemiological and genetic data. At the time of this study, the Russian database HIVDR contained 10,626 unique records about patients and 13,126 nucleotide sequences deposited by 10 institutions. The following functions have been provided for data analysis: quality control of the epidemiological and clinical information about a patient, quality control of nucleotide sequences, contamination check, subtyping, detection of DR mutations, identification of viral tropism and generation of standardized reports. The efforts toward further development of the Russian HIVDR database will be focused on designing tools for detection and analysis of molecular clusters, adaptation to routine application for epidemiological surveillance of HIV infection.

Keywords

• hiv
• drug resistance
• database
• nucleotide sequence
• quality control
• subtyping
• molecular clusters
• molecular epidemiology