O111. The changing face of HIV resistance; HIV drug resistance north and south — what's next?

Excerpt

HIV drug resistance has proved to one of the greatest challenges to effective and durable viral suppression. Selection of drug resistance mutations and widespread cross-resistance between agents of a class are a main obstacle when administering antiretroviral agents in clinical practice. This has been perhaps the greatest barrier to incorporating HIV care in to routine medical management administered by general practitioners. As opposed to many other disease states where the development of effective therapy allowed for simple widespread use as part of general care, HIV drug resistance has mandated cumbersome, resource consuming and demanding medical practice from both clinicians and even more so patients. Extremely demanding lifelong drug taking behavior by patients, high level clinician knowledge and expertise; and expensive monitoring technologies are all required for durable clinical benefit from antiretroviral therapy due to resistance. …