Low-Abundance HIV Drug-Resistant Viral Variants in Treatment-Experienced Persons Correlate with Historical Antiretroviral Use

It is largely unknown how frequently low-abundance HIV drug-resistant variants at levels under limit of detection of conventional genotyping (<20% of quasi-species) are present in antiretroviral-experienced persons experiencing virologic failure. Further, the clinical implications of low-abundance drug-resistant variants at time of virologic failure are unknown.