Effect of CCR5-Δ32 Heterozygosity on the Risk of Perinatal HIV-1 Infection: A Meta-Analysis

Several studies have investigated whether heterozygosity for a 32-basepair deletion in the CC chemokine receptor 5 gene (CCR5-Δ32) affects susceptibility to perinatal HIV-1 infection, but results have been inconclusive. We performed a meta-analysis of published data from 11 studies of HIV-1 perinatally exposed children who were genotyped for the CCR5-Δ32 polymorphism. The crude overall HIV-1 infection rates, by simple data pooling, were 20% (one of five) among CCR5-Δ32 homozygote children, 39% (131 of 335) among CCR5-Δ32 heterozygote children, and 40% (1408 of 3526) among wild-type CCR5 homozygote children. Compared with wild-type CCR5 homozygotes, the random effects risk ratio for CCR5-Δ32 heterozygotes was 1.04 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.92-1.17) among all children (N = 3861) and 1.03 (95% Cl, 0.90-1.17) among those of European descent (n = 2890). Results were similar when adjusted for the available data on the CCR2-641 polymorphism (n = 1542). The meta-analysis clarifies that perinatal infection is not significantly altered by heterozygosity for CCR5-Δ32 in the child.