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With over 20 anti-HIV drugs now available, it’s possible for virtually every patient with HIV to suppress their HIV to undetectable levels. Resistance can mean that an anti-HIV drug doesn’t work properly. Therefore, you should have a blood test to check for resistance to anti-HIV drugs before you start, or change HIV treatment.
The results of this test will help you and your doctor decide which drugs have the best chance of working against your HIV.
Now a study has found that resistance tests can find drug-resistant virus even when a patient has a low viral load. This means that it is possible to change promptly to a combination of anti-HIV drugs that work against the virus.
The resistance tests in routine use were developed to detect resistance when viral load was 1000 copies/ml or above.
But these tests have been improved so that they can detect resistance at much lower levels.
Now researchers have found that these tests can correctly identify resistant virus when a person’s viral load is as low as 300 copies/ml.
Even with viral load at these low levels, the tests accurately identified strains of the virus that had resistance to each of the major classes of anti-HIV drugs.
The researchers believe that doing resistance tests for patients with low viral loads may help doctors recommend switching to a more effective treatment as soon as there's a sign of resistance developing.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
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