Prospective Trials of Drug Resistance Testing

Prospective Trials of Drug Resistance Testing

HAVANA

A study that addresses directly the role of expert advice is the Havana study, conducted in Spain. This randomized study compared the utility of genotypic resistance testing, expert advice, or both as compared to standard of care in selecting salvage regimens for patients experiencing failure of antiretroviral therapy (plasma HIV-1 RNA level >1000 copies/mL).

Two hundred forty-seven patients were enrolled. Genotyping and expert advice each resulted in significantly better virologic response. The best response rates were observed in patients who received both genotyping and expert advice. These results suggest that although expert advice is helpful, the availability of genotypic resistance assays leads to further improvements in virologic outcome of salvage therapy (21).

4/15/01

Contents

Drug Resistance Testing in HIV-1 Infection

Diagnosing HIV Infection

Virus Load Testing

Immunologocal Testing

Therapeutic Drug Level Monitoring

Glossary of Terms

References

Tables