BACKGROUND Protease inhibitor monotherapy is associated with more frequent episodes of viral rebounds above 50 copies/mL than triple therapy. OBJECTIVE To evaluate if, compared to triple-drug therapy, protease inhibitor monotherapy is associated with increased levels of inflammatory/procoagulant markers and more frequent plasma residual viremia detection. METHODS In this cross-sectional stu...

Genetic evolution of the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) envelope glycoprotein was evaluated in a group of six macaques (Macaca nemestrina) infected with the molecularly cloned, moderately pathogenic SIVsm62d. The extent of envelope evolution was subsequently evaluated within the context of the individual pattern of viremia and disease outcome. Two macaques in this cohort developed AIDS by ...

The rates of immunologic and clinical progression are lower in patients with drug-resistant HIV compared to wild-type HIV. This difference is not fully explained by viral load. It has been argued that reductions in T cell activation and/or viral fitness might result in preserved target cells and an altered relationship between the level of viremia and the rate of CD4+ T cell loss. We tested thi...

BACKGROUND A randomized, double-blind study was conducted to evaluate the pharmacokinetics of ganciclovir following oral administration of ganciclovir or valganciclovir for prophylaxis of cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease in solid organ transplant recipients (n = 240/372). METHODS The correlations between individual exposure to ganciclovir during prophylaxis, with CMV viremia incidence during and...

Initiating combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) during acute HIV infection has been correlated with decreased viral set point and improved lymphocyte function. However, the long term effects of single-agent therapy administered only during the acute stage of infection (interrupted treatment) remain largely uncharacterized. In this study we provide longitudinal data using the feline immunode...

BACKGROUND A phase 2 trial was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of a topical antiviral, sorivudine, as an adjuvant to valacyclovir for the treatment of acute herpes zoster. METHODS In this randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial, 25 patients were treated with either sorivudine or placebo cream. All patients began 7 days of valacyclovir treatment on day 3. Zoster lesion swab sampl...

To the Editor—The recent report of Yasui et al. [1] describing the dynamics of hepatitis C viremia following interferon-a administration contains some intriguing information regarding the ratio of core protein to hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA. First, there are very few laboratories that can measure the concentration of HCV core protein in serum. Thus, the information provided in table 1 of [1], g...

OBJECTIVE Simultaneous pancreas-kidney (SPK) transplantation in type 1 diabetic patients requires immunotherapy against allo- and autoreactive T-cells. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is a major cause for morbidity after transplantation and is possibly related to recurrent autoimmunity. In this study, we assessed the pattern of CMV viremia in SPK transplant recipients receiving either antithymo...

Highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) of human immunodeficiency type 1 (HIV-1) infection is very effective in controlling infection, but elimination of viral infection has not been achieved as yet, and upon treatment interruption an immediate rebound of viremia is observed. A combination of HAART with an immune stimulation might allow treatment interruption without this rebounding vire...

BACKGROUND Combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), the standard of care for HIV-1 infection, is considered to be successful when plasma viremia remains below the detection limit of commercial assays. Yet, cART fails in a substantial proportion of patients after the apparent success. No laboratory markers are known that are predictive of cART outcome in initial responders during the period of...