Background The prevalence of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) was highly prevalent In Zambia. But very little is known about the effect of ART on HIV subtype C associated neurological disease.

Methods Brain and lymphnotes tissues: from autopsies of dead HIV+/AIDS patients, provided by local hospitals. First, frozen tissue blocks were cracked, DNA was extracted. Then, Env V2-V5 region of HIV proviral DNA was amplified by PCR with clade C specific primers. 2.0 µg of template DNA was employed with Fast Start HF and platinum pfx DNA. Finally, phylogenetic trees were drawn.

Results Out of 12 HIV/AIDS cases detected, 6 cases were found to be HIV DNA positive for at least 1 positive in total 7 different brain tissues (FL,PL,TL,OL,H,C,BG), and their lymphnote samples were also HIV positive the same time. So HIV infection rate of brain was 50%. For the 2 ART non-treated cases, 85.7% (12/14) of the samples of different tissue was HIV positive, while it was 17.6% (6/34) in 7 ART treated cases. All DNA sequences were blasted as HIV subtype C, and clustered with subtype C reference strains.

Conclusion In this study, the HIV infection rate in all brain tissue samples in untreated cases (87.5%) was much less than that in treated cases(17.6%), It suggested that ART may help control the spread of HIV infection in brain tissues.

Disclosure No significant relationships.