Isolation and virological characterization of HIV-1 in Cuba. Relationship with the clinical status of the patients.

The objective of this paper is the isolation and biological characterization of HIV-1 from patients at different clinical status of the disease. Clinical, epidemiological and virological aspects of 54 infected people were studied. Isolate HIV-1 strains were characterized and classified in relation with replication kinetics and cellular tropism as well as syncytium inducing (SI), and non syncytium inducing (NSI) capacity. The biological phenotype of viral isolates was correlated with the clinical status of each patient. HIV was isolated from 92.8% AIDS patients and 46.1% asymptomatic seropositive patients, 12 out of 26 strains of AIDS patients were classified rapid high (RH) and SI, however 2 out of 12 strains of asymptomatic seropositive carriers were considered similar too. The percentage of recovered viral isolates correlates with the patient's clinical status, and the association existing between the isolate biological phenotype and the clinical status of the infection in most of the cases, but not in all was demonstrated.