Background: Protease inhibitors (PIs) to treat hepatitis C (HCV) virus infection have been approved and others are under development.
Results: The aims of this study were to illustrate natural polymorphisms in the HCV protease and measure the frequency of PI resistance mutations in different HCV genotypes from PI-naïve patients.Direct sequencing of HCV NS3/4A protease was performed in 156 HCV patients naïve to PIs who were infected with genotype 1a (n = 31), 1b (n = 39), 2 (n = 30), 3 (n = 33) and 4 (n = 23).
Viral population in a long term non progressor carrying CRF02-AG HIV-1 virus variants with a truncated RT gene and attenuated virus replication was analyzed. The proportion of mutant and wild-type RT sequences was determined by clonal analysis of HIV-1 DNA and RNA from blood samples and peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) culture supernatants. Recombinant HIV-1 strains were generated by reverse genetics to evaluate the replicative capacity of RT variants in PBMC cultures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAmong 1330 patients undergoing highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), 3 showed 1 or 2 amino acid (aa) insertions at position 35 of the HIV-1 protease gene. Protease genes containing aa insertions, either in the presence (ins35G+res.muts, ins35TN+res.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResistance to antiretroviral drugs is one of the major pitfalls of combined treatment of HIV infection. Thus, timely identification of drug resistant HIV strains and precise evaluation of the level of resistance to the different antiretroviral drugs are crucial in the management of treated patients. Phenotypic determination of antiretroviral drug resistance evaluates the ability of an HIV strain to replicate in the presence of drug(s).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTransplantation Centers using human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) antigenemia-based preemptive therapy will need to replace in the near future the antigenemia assay with a more standardized and automatable assay, such as a molecular assay quantifying HCMV DNA in blood (DNAemia). Thus, in view of replacing antigenemia with clinically safe cutoff values, DNAemia levels corresponding to antigenemia cutoffs guiding HCMV preemptive therapy were determined retrospectively in solid organ and hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients (HSCTR) using an "in-house" quantitative PCR (QPCR) method. Since preemptive therapy had prevented appearance of HCMV disease in all patients tested, DNA cutoffs determined retrospectively had to be considered as safe clinically as antigenemia cutoffs used prospectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF