HIV-1 Integrase Resistance among Highly Antiretroviral Experienced Patients from Morocco.

Background: We aimed to analyze for the first time in Morocco the integrase (IN) sequence variability among highly experienced HIV-1-infected patients with no prior IN strand transfer inhibitor (INSTI) exposure who failed on reverse transcriptase inhibitors and protease inhibitors.

Methods: The HIV-1 IN region was sequenced from plasma samples of all 78 recruited patients. The amino acid IN sequences were HIV-1 subtyped and screened for the presence of polymorphisms against the HxB2 clade B consensus sequence by the geno2pheno subtyping tool and interpreted for drug resistance according to the Stanford algorithm.