This surveillance study showed concerning levels of HIV drug resistance in Argentina, especially to NNRTIs. Due to this finding, Argentina's Ministry of Health guidelines will change, recommending performing a resistance test for everyone before starting ART. If this is taken up properly, it also might function as a continuing surveillance tool.

No abstract

This PDR surveillance study showed concerning levels of HIV drug resistance (HIVDR) in Argentina, not only for first-generation NNRTIs but also to rilpivirine. In our setting, performing resistance testing would be necessary before prescription of ART even if a second-generation NNRTI-based regimen was used as first-line therapy.

Vertical transmission is the main route of HIV infection in childhood. Because of the persistence of maternal HIV antibodies, virologic assays that directly detect HIV are required to diagnose HIV infection in infants younger than 18 months of age. The sensitivity of HIV RNA/DNA assays increases as the child becomes older. These tests have specificity values greater than 95%. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of the COBAS Taqman HIV-1 Test, v1.0 assay (Roche) and its concordance with a Multiplex Nested-PCR. Of 341 samples processed, 15 were positive and 326 negative by both methods. Sensitivity and specificity overall values for the viral load assay were 88.2% and 100%, respectively. Our results indicate that the COBAS Taqman assay evaluated could be used as an alternative method to diagnose HIV congenital infection.

The introduction of nucleic acid amplification techniques (NAT) in blood banks was intended to reduce the residual risk of transfusion-transmitted infections. Co-circulation of a great diversity of HIV-1 variants in Argentina portrays the need to assess the sensitivity of serological and molecular assays available for their detection. In this study, we evaluated the sensitivity of the COBAS AmpliScreen™ HIV-1 Test, version 1.5 (Roche) for the detection of HIV-1 RNA in plasma samples of infected individuals from Argentina. The results of this study reveal that this technique has high sensitivity for the detection of HIV-1 RNA under assay conditions: using mini-pool testing, pools ≥ 50 RNA copies per ml achieved ≥ 92 % sensitivity, whereas in the standard procedure, samples ≥ 207 RNA copies/ml achieved 100 % sensitivity. Moreover, the COBAS AmpliScreen™ HIV-1 Test, version 1.5 (Roche) is suitable for detecting prevailing HIV-1 variants.