In a subset of subjects on highly active antiretroviral therapy, human immunodeficiency virus type 1 RNA in plasma decays from 50 to Michele Di Mascio  1 , Geethanjali Dornadula, Hui Zhang, Julie Sullivan, Yan Xu, Joseph Kulkosky, Roger J Pomerantz, Alan S Perelson Affiliations Expand Affiliation 1 Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA. PMID: 12525664 PMCID: PMC140859 DOI: 10.1128/jvi.77.3.2271-2275.2003 Free PMC article Item in Clipboard

Abstract

Three of five virally suppressed human immunodeficiency virus type I (HIV-1)-infected patients treated with highly active antiretroviral therapy and followed intensively with a supersensitive reverse transcriptase PCR assay with a lower limit of quantitation of 5 copies/ml showed statistically significant viral load decays below 50 copies/ml, with half-lives of 5 to 8 months and a mean of 6 months. This range of half-lives is consistent with the estimated half-life of the latent HIV-1 reservoir in the peripheral blood. Those patients without decay of viral load in plasma may have significant cryptic HIV-1 residual replication.

Figures

FIG. 1.

Viral loads in plasma (filled circles) for patients 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (PAT 1 through 5) and best-fitting linear regression lines. For patients 3 and 4 the slope of the regression line was not different from zero, and the line is not shown. Data for viral load data were fitted by using a maximum-likelihood procedure that allows for censored data, i.e., data given in the form of