Table II.

Classification of amino acid substitutions in MHC class I–restricted epitopes as being toward or away from a 1b consensus sequence in 22 women exposed to a common HCV subtype 1b inoculum

Effect of allele presence on likelihood of amino acid replacement	Changes in epitopes relative to 1b consensus per 1,000 sites
	Allele present		Allele absent
	Toward consensus	Away from consensus	Toward consensus	Away from consensus
	566 sites		1,766 sites
Increased relative risk (B*07, B*35, B*37)	0.0	56.5a	0.0	4.5
	510 sites		1,030 sites
Decreased relative risk (A*01, B*08)	3.8	4.7	22.3a	4.8

Results are stratified (in columns) by the presence or the absence of the relevant allele, and grouped (rows) according to relative risk for change shown in Table I. Changes are per 1000 epitope sites, based on whether the resulting residue matches HCV 1b consensus.

^aP < 0.001 for comparison of toward versus away.