Publications

BACKGROUND

Patients with HIV have increased risk for cardiovascular disease, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of echocardiographic abnormalities among asymptomatic HIV-infected individuals compared with HIV-uninfected individuals. Methods/Results- We performed echocardiography in 196 HIV-infected adults and 52 controls. Left ventricular ejection fraction, left ventricular mass indexed to the body surface area, and diastolic function were assessed according to American Society of Echocardiography standards. Left ventricular mass index was higher in HIV-infected patients (77.2 g/m(2) in patients with HIV versus 66.5 g/m(2) in controls, P<0.0001). Left ventricular ejection fraction was similar in both groups. Eight (4%) of the patients with HIV had evidence of left ventricular systolic dysfunction (defined as an EF <50%) versus none of the controls; 97 (50%) had mild diastolic dysfunction compared with 29% of the HIV-uninfected subjects (P=0.008). After adjustment for hypertension and race, HIV-infected participants had a mean 8 g/m(2) larger left ventricular mass index compared with controls (P=0.001). Higher left ventricular mass index was independently associated with lower nadir CD4 T-cell count, suggesting that immunodeficiency may play a role in this process. After adjustment for age and traditional risk factors, patients with HIV had a 2.4 greater odds of having diastolic dysfunction as compared with controls (P=0.019).

CONCLUSIONS

HIV-infected patients had a higher prevalence of diastolic dysfunction and higher left ventricular mass index compared with controls. These differences were not readily explained by differences in traditional risk factors and were independently associated with HIV infection. These results suggest that contemporary asymptomatic patients with HIV manifest mild functional and morphological cardiac abnormalities, which are independently associated with HIV infection.

BACKGROUND

While spouse correlations have been documented for numerous traits, no prior studies have assessed assortative mating for genetic ancestry in admixed populations.

RESULTS

Using 104 ancestry informative markers, we examined spouse correlations in genetic ancestry for Mexican spouse pairs recruited from Mexico City and the San Francisco Bay Area, and Puerto Rican spouse pairs recruited from Puerto Rico and New York City. In the Mexican pairs, we found strong spouse correlations for European and Native American ancestry, but no correlation in African ancestry. In the Puerto Rican pairs, we found significant spouse correlations for African ancestry and European ancestry but not Native American ancestry. Correlations were not attributable to variation in socioeconomic status or geographic heterogeneity. Past evidence of spouse correlation was also seen in the strong evidence of linkage disequilibrium between unlinked markers, which was accounted for in regression analysis by ancestral allele frequency difference at the pair of markers (European versus Native American for Mexicans, European versus African for Puerto Ricans). We also observed an excess of homozygosity at individual markers within the spouses, but this provided weaker evidence, as expected, of spouse correlation. Ancestry variance is predicted to decline in each generation, but less so under assortative mating. We used the current observed variances of ancestry to infer even stronger patterns of spouse ancestry correlation in previous generations.

CONCLUSIONS

Assortative mating related to genetic ancestry persists in Latino populations to the current day, and has impacted on the genomic structure in these populations.