Introduction A major challenge in Romania is the optimisation of antiretroviral therapy for the many HIV-infected adults with, on average, a decade of treatment experience. The RDI has developed computational models that predict virological response to therapy but these require a genotype, which is not routinely available in Romania. Moreover the models, which were trained without any Romanian data, have proved most accurate for patients from the healthcare settings that contributed the training data. Here we develop and test a novel model that does not require a genotype, with test data from Romania.Methods A random forest (RF) model was developed to predict the probability of the HIV viral load (VL) being reduced to <50 copies/ml following therapy change. The input variables were baseline VL, CD4 count, treatment history and time to follow-up. The model was developed with 3188 treatment changes episodes (TCEs) from North America, Western Europe and Australia. The model's predictions for 100 independent TCEs from the RDI database were compared to those of a model trained with the same data plus genotypes and then tested using 39 TCEs from Romania in terms of the area under the ROC curve (AUC).Results When tested with the 100 independent RDI TCEs, the AUC values for the models with and without genotypes were 0.88 and 0.86 respectively. For the 39 Romanian TCEs the AUC was 0.60. However, when 14 cases with viral loads that may have been between 50 and 400 copies were removed, the AUC increased to 0.83. Discussion Despite having been trained without data from Romania, the model predicted treatment responses in treatment-experienced Romanian patients with clade F virus accurately without the need for a genotype. The results suggest that this approach might be generalisable and useful in helping design optimal salvage regimens for treatment-experienced patients in countries with limited resources where genotyping is not always available.

Objective. Antiretroviral drug selection in resource-limited settings is often dictated by strict protocols as part of a public health strategy. The objective of this retrospective study was to examine if the HIV-TRePS online treatment prediction tool could help reduce treatment failure and drug costs in such settings. Methods. The HIV-TRePS computational models were used to predict the probability of response to therapy for 206 cases of treatment change following failure in India. The models were used to identify alternative locally available 3-drug regimens, which were predicted to be effective. The costs of these regimens were compared to those actually used in the clinic. Results. The models predicted the responses to treatment of the cases with an accuracy of 0.64. The models identified alternative drug regimens that were predicted to result in improved virological response and lower costs than those used in the clinic in 85% of the cases. The average annual cost saving was $364 USD per year (41%). Conclusions. Computational models that do not require a genotype can predict and potentially avoid treatment failure and may reduce therapy costs. The use of such a system to guide therapeutic decision-making could confer health economic benefits in resource-limited settings.

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