%0 Journal Article
%T Minority HIV-1 Drug Resistance Mutations Are Present in Antiretroviral Treatment¨CNa£żve Populations and Associate with Reduced Treatment Efficacy
%A Jeffrey A Johnson
%A Jin-Fen Li
%A Xierong Wei
%A Jonathan Lipscomb
%A David Irlbeck
%A Charles Craig
%A Amanda Smith
%A Diane E Bennett
%A Michael Monsour
%A Paul Sandstrom
%A E. Randall Lanier
%A Walid Heneine
%J PLOS Medicine
%D 2008
%I Public Library of Science (PLoS)
%R 10.1371/journal.pmed.0050158
%X Background Transmitted HIV-1 drug resistance can compromise initial antiretroviral therapy (ART); therefore, its detection is important for patient management. The absence of drug-associated selection pressure in treatment-na£żve persons can cause drug-resistant viruses to decline to levels undetectable by conventional bulk sequencing (minority drug-resistant variants). We used sensitive and simple tests to investigate evidence of transmitted drug resistance in antiretroviral drug-na£żve persons and assess the clinical implications of minority drug-resistant variants. Methods and Findings We performed a cross-sectional analysis of transmitted HIV-1 drug resistance and a case-control study of the impact of minority drug resistance on treatment response. For the cross-sectional analysis, we examined viral RNA from newly diagnosed ART-na£żve persons in the US and Canada who had no detectable (wild type, n = 205) or one or more resistance-related mutations (n = 303) by conventional sequencing. Eight validated real-time PCR-based assays were used to test for minority drug resistance mutations (protease L90M and reverse transcriptase M41L, K70R, K103N, Y181C, M184V, and T215F/Y) above naturally occurring frequencies. The sensitive real-time PCR testing identified one to three minority drug resistance mutation(s) in 34/205 (17%) newly diagnosed persons who had wild-type virus by conventional genotyping; four (2%) individuals had mutations associated with resistance to two drug classes. Among 30/303 (10%) samples with bulk genotype resistance mutations we found at least one minority variant with a different drug resistance mutation. For the case-control study, we assessed the impact of three treatment-relevant drug resistance mutations at baseline from a separate group of 316 previously ART-na£żve persons with no evidence of drug resistance on bulk genotype testing who were placed on efavirenz-based regimens. We found that 7/95 (7%) persons who experienced virologic failure had minority drug resistance mutations at baseline; however, minority resistance was found in only 2/221 (0.9%) treatment successes (Fisher exact test, p = 0.0038). Conclusions These data suggest that a considerable proportion of transmitted HIV-1 drug resistance is undetected by conventional genotyping and that minority mutations can have clinical consequences. With no treatment history to help guide therapies for drug-na£żve persons, the findings suggest an important role for sensitive baseline drug resistance testing.
%U http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0050158