Validation of molecular clock inferred HIV infection ages: evidence for accurate estimation of infection dates

Abstract Improving HIV diagnosis, access to care and effective antiretroviral treatment provides our global strategy to reduce HIV incidence. To reach this goal we need to increase our knowledge about local epidemics. HIV infection dates would be an important information towards this goal, but they are largely unknown. To date, methods to estimate the dates of HIV infection are based mainly on laboratory or molecular methods. Our aim was to validate molecular clock inferred infection dates that were estimated by analysing sequences from 145 people living with HIV (PLHIV) with known transmission dates (clinically estimated infection dates). All HIV sequences were obtained by Sanger sequencing and were previously found to belong to well-established molecular transmission clusters (MTCs). Our analysis showed that the molecular clock inferred infection dates were correlated with the clinically estimated ones (Spearman’s Correlation coefficient = 0.93, p