Two authors perused the papers and extracted the data according to the above inclusion and exclusion criteria. The following characteristics were collected from the eligible studies: first author, year of publication, country of studied population, ethnicity, sample size of the cohorts, number of HIV-1 patients, number of normal healthy controls, number of HIV-1 exposed but seronegative (HESN) controls, and the distribution of the DC-SIGNR VNTR genotype among case and control groups.