Transmission of anelloviruses to HIV-1 infected children

Anelloviruses (AVs) are widespread in the population and infect humans at the early stage of life. However, the mode of transmission of AVs is still unknown, but mother-to-child transmission, e.g. via breastfeeding, is one of the likely infection routes. To determine whether the mother-to-child transmission may still occur despite the absence of natural birth and breastfeeding, anelloviruses in 29 serum samples from five HIV-1-positive mother and child pairs were Illumina-sequenced. The Illumina reads were mapped to an AV lineage database Anellometrix, which contains more than 500 distinct ORF1 sequences. We observed that only the minority of AV lineages are shared between the mothers, but the mother-child pairs share more and have more similar anellomes. These findings suggest that AVs may be transmitted from mothers to children via different routes than delivery or breastfeeding.