Characterization of HIV-1 antiretroviral drug resistance after second-line treatment failure in Mali, a limited-resources setting.

Objectives: We describe the outcomes of second-line drug resistance profiles and predict the efficacy of drugs for third-line therapy in patients monitored without the benefit of plasma HIV-1 RNA viral load (VL) or resistance testing.

Methods: We recruited 106 HIV-1-infected patients after second-line treatment failure in Mali. VL was determined by the Abbott RealTime system and the resistance by the ViroSeq HIV-1 genotyping system.