title: Human immunodeficiency virus drug therapy and virus load.
abstract: Analysis of the short-term dynamics of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1 infection in response to drug therapy has elucidated crucial kinetic properties of viral dynamics in vivo (D. D. Ho et al., Nature 373:123-126, 1995; A. S. Perelson et al., Science 271:1582-1586, 1996; X. Wei et al., Nature 373:117-122, 1995). Here we investigated long-term changes in virus load in patients treated with a combination of lamivudine and zidovudine to identify principal factors responsible for the observed 10- to 100-fold sustained suppression of virus load in vivo. Interestingly, most standard accounts of virus dynamics cannot explain a large sustained reduction without shifting the virus very close to extinction. The effect can be explained by taking into consideration either (i) the immune response against HIV, (ii) the killing of uninfected CD4 cells, or (iii) the differential efficacies of the drugs in different cell populations.
authors.affiliation: Wellcome Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. seb@zoo.ox.ac.uk
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bonhoeffer
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Coffin
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Nowak
mesh_terms: D019380:Anti-HIV Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000276:immunology / Q000821:virology; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000276:immunology / Q000302:isolation & purification; D006801:Humans; D019259:Lamivudine / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D018894:Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors / Q000627:therapeutic use; D019562:Viral Load; D015215:Zidovudine / Q000627:therapeutic use*
chemical_list: D019380:Anti-HIV Agents; D018894:Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors; D019259:Lamivudine; D015215:Zidovudine