1 research outputs found
Predicting the duration of antiviral treatment needed to suppress plasma HIV-1 RNA
Effective therapeutic interventions and clinical care of adults infected with HIV-1 require an understanding
of factors that influence time of response to antiretroviral therapy. We have studied a cohort
of 118 HIV-1-infected subjects naive to antiretroviral therapy and have correlated the time of response
to treatment with a series of virological and immunological measures, including levels of viral load
in blood and lymph node, percent of CD4 T cells in lymph nodes, and CD4 T-cell count in blood at
study entry. Suppression of viremia below the limit of detection, 50 HIV-1 RNA copies/mL of plasma,
served as a benchmark for a successful virological response. We employed these correlations to
predict the length of treatment required to attain a virological response in each patient. Baseline plasma
viremia emerged as the factor most tightly correlated with the duration of treatment required,
allowing us to estimate the required time as a function of this one measure