HIV-1 Genetic Diversity and Drug Resistance Mutations among Pregnant Women and Breastfeeding Mothers in Uganda

Uganda still falls short of the World Health Organisation’s targets of viral load suppression among the breastfeeding and pregnant women. This may be explained by increased levels of HIV-1 drug resistance mutations (HIV-DRMs) subsequently increasing the risk of vertical transmission in the country. Kapaata aims to describe the HIV-1 subtypes and the prevalence of HIV-1 DRMs among pregnant and breastfeeding mothers in Uganda in the dolutegravir (DTG) era. Knowledge of HIV DRM supports proper management of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the population leading to improved treatment outcomes among people living with HIV and reducing the risk of onward transmission of the virus. This data will provide information on levels of circulating subtypes, drug resistance, vertical transmission, and inform policies for the prevention and eradication of mother to child transmission of HIV. This is a cross sectional study on stored samples of 200 participants with a viral load above 1000copies/ml stored from May 2023 to December 2023 at the Central Public Health Laboratories. The Mi-seq next generation sequencing platform is being used to sequence the samples and online tools including the Stanford HIV drug resistance database mutation scoring system to identify resistance.