High HIV-1 diversity in immigrants resident in Italy (2008–2017)

The proportion of new diagnoses of HIV infection in immigrants residing in Italy raised from 11% in 1992 to 29.7% in 2018. To investigate the HIV clades circulating in this community a retrospective study was performed in 557 HIV-infected immigrants living in 12 Italian cities. Immigrants originated from East-Europe and Central-Asia (11.7%), North Africa and Middle East (7.3%), South and South-East Asia (7.2%), Latin America and the Caribbean (14.4%), and sub-Saharan Africa (59.4%). More than 87% of immigrants were on antiretroviral therapy (ART), although 26.6% of them were viremic. A 22.0% of immigrants had hepatitis (HBV and/or HCV) and/or tuberculosis. HIV phylogenetic analysis on sequences from 192 immigrants showed the presence of clades B (23.4%), G (16.1%), C (10.4%), A1 (9.4%), F1 (5.2%), D (1.6%) and Circulating Recombinant Forms (CRFs) (33.9%). CRF02_AG represented 72.3% of the total CRFs. Clusters between immigrants and Italian natives were also present. Drug resistance mutations to NRTI, NNRTI, and PI drug classes occurred in 29.1% of ART-treated and in 12.9% of ART-naïve individuals. These data highlight the need for tailored public health interventions in immigrants to avoid spreading in Italy of HIV genetic forms and ART-resistant variants, as well as HIV co-morbidities.