title: The latent HIV-1 reservoir in patients undergoing HAART: an archive of pre-HAART drug resistance.
abstract: Recent studies on patients with a history of pre-HAART drug resistance, but currently on a successful regimen, provided new insights into the dynamics of the latent cellular viral reservoir. Results indicated that the latent reservoir is an archive, composed of a mixture of wild-type and drug-resistant strains. The studies showed that, even after years of successful HAART, the wild-type viral strains that circulated before the initiation of the therapy as well as all the different drug-resistant viral strains that evolved over time during eventual periods of non-suppressive treatment, remain detectable in the proviral reservoir. These findings support the hypothesis that during active viral replication, new variants, including drug-resistant ones, continuously enter the latent viral reservoir. It can be concluded that, as a consequence of the lifelong conservation of this latent reservoir, the potency of drugs for which resistance once developed will remain reduced, even after years of withdrawal of the drug.
authors.affiliation: AIDS Reference Laboratory, Ghent University Hospital, De Pintelaan 185, B-9000 Gent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Ann
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Noë
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Plum
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Verhofstede
mesh_terms: D023241:Antiretroviral Therapy, Highly Active; D024882:Drug Resistance, Viral; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000821:virology*; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D017735:Virus Latency