ORs with 95% CI were calculated to assess the association between VNTR polymorphism in the DC-SIGNR gene and HIV-1 susceptibility. In the primary analysis, an allelic association test was performed for the prevalent alleles, which were (1) the 7repeat allele, (2) the 5-repeat allele, (3) the 6-repeat allele and (4) the 9-repeat allele. These alleles represented the four most prevalent alleles in human population. To correct for multiple testing for these 4 alleles, a Bonferroni correction was also applied to determine the corrected p-value (p-value corrected). After that it was found that 5-repeat allele had a protective effect. An exhaustive round of post-hoc analysis was carried out to identify if any particular genetic model was in operation. In this post-hoc analysis, the pooled ORs were performed between HIV-1 patients and control groups in the following genetic models: (1) the homozygote proportion [24, 25] , (2) the 7/7 genotype vs. the other genotypes, (3) the 5/5 genotype vs. the other genotypes, (4) the 5/7 genotype vs. the other genotypes, (5) the 6/7 genotype vs. the other genotypes, (6) the 7/9 genotype vs. the other genotypes. As it is an explorative attempt to delineate the mode of operation account for the protective effect in the genetic test, no Bonferroni correction was carried out in this stage. In all the genetic models, the types of controls were used: (1) healthy normal or population controls and (2) HIV-1 exposed but seronegative (HESN) controls (see the Table S1 for detailed breakdown). Because the remaining rare genotypes and alleles of the VNTR locus have negligible frequencies in the cohorts, their comparisons were not conducted in this analysis. Stratified analyses were performed by ethnicity and sample size.