detection of the newly characterized hiv crf56_cpx in marseille, southeastern france

Objectives: We aimed to seek HIV sequences highly similar to CRF56-cpx, a recently described newly circulating B/CRF02/G recombinant HIV, in our local clinical microbiology laboratory sequence database. Methods: A recently implemented tool that combines a databank of all HIV nucleotide sequences obtained at our clinical microbiology laboratory with a search tool that uses BLAST was used. A comparative and phylogenetic analysis of HIV protease and reverse transcriptase fragments was performed. Results: We identified two sequences that were clustered with CRF56-cpx with a bootstrap value of 99% in phylogenetic analyses; these were obtained from two patients diagnosed with HIV in 2009–2011. HIV protease–reverse transcriptase sequences obtained from these two patients shared a mean identity of 98.2 ± 0.2% with previously described CRF56-cpx sequences. Both case patients diagnosed with HIV in our centre were highly sexually active men who have sex with men. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the continuous expansion of HIV diversity in France and indicate that real-time surveillance of HIV molecular epidemiology, including the comparison of sequences from laboratory, national, and international databases, might be helpful to identify the emergence, circulation, and transmission of viral strains.