Aids,” said Kitabwalla and Ruprecht, who suggest it could eventually be used to target mutant genes in cancer cells. But they cautioned that the approach is “many years from clinical practice.”
Laurence Gibson

HIV drug resistance is ‘inevitable’

The development of drug resistant HIV is inevitable, according to Professor Roy Anderson of London’s Imperial College.
Speaking at the 6th Annual UK Resistance Meeting, held prior to the autumn British HIV Association (BHIVA) conference , Professor Anderson said that HIV treatment must be lifelong because if patients stop taking their drugs, the virus bounces back to pre-treatment levels.
Levels of drug resistant HIV are often much higher in seminal and vaginal fluid than in the blood, he said, which makes the virus that much more transmissible.
“Most of the drugs are less efficient than we previously thought at inhibiting

Prof Anderson: ‘Drug resistance inevitable’

viral replication.”
People taking anti-HIV drugs need to be 95 per cent adherent to prevent the development of resistance, he explained, and drug resistant mutations of HIV occur much quicker in the presence of non-nucleoside (NNRTI) drugs than among nucleosides (NRTIs) or protease inhibitors (PI’s).
“Resistance is inevitable. It’s not a matter of if, but when. We always, almost inevitably get resistance.”
“If you can keep viral load levels below 50 copies, it’s a delayed time scale but it’s still going to happen,” Professor Anderson added.

Professor Jonathan Webber, of Imperial College School of Tropical Medicine, suggested it might well be worth doing resistance testing on patients prior to them starting therapy.