Nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) are the backbone of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) recommended for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection (7,20), and the use of NRTI-containing combination therapy has significantly decreased the morbidity and mortality associated with HIV disease in treated patients (18,19). NRTIs share a common mechanism of action. All undergo intracellular activation to the NRTI triphosphate (NRTI-TP) form, after which they compete with endogenous deoxynucleotide triphosphates for binding to the viral reverse transcriptase (RT) enzyme, and incorporation of the monophosphate (MP) into the nascent DNA. Since NRTIs lack a substituent capable of supporting further DNA elongation, the incorporation of the NRTI-MP results in the termination of chain elongation and inhibition of reverse transcription.Many patients whose viral replication is effectively controlled by combination antiretroviral therapy ultimately experience virologic failure because of the development of antiretroviral resistance (for reviews, see references 23 and 24). A 6-year survey of viral genotypes in France found that almost 80% of clinical HIV samples collected until 2002 had mutations conferring resistance to NRTIs (29). Primary infection with resistant strains is also being increasingly recognized as a clinical problem in some countries (10,14,26,31). NRTI resistance results from mutational changes within the RT gene. The resulting resistance mechanisms fall into two main categories (for reviews, see references 4 and 8). One group of RT mutations acts to increase the rate of RT-catalyzed phosphorolysis, i.e., the RT-catalyzed excision of the incorporated NRTI-MP from the chain-terminated DNA. These mutations include M41L, D67N, K70R, L210W, T215Y, and K219Q and are sometimes referred to collectively as thymidine analogue mutations (TAMs). The accumulation of these mutations confers high-level resistance to zidovudine and affects viral sensitivity to other NRTIs, including stavudine, tenofovir, and abacavir (4). The other mechanism by which mutations in RT can cause resistance to NRTIs is by altering the discrimination between deoxynucleoside triphosphate substrates and NRTI-TP inhibitors by the substrate binding site of RT. Examples of such mutations include the M184V mutation, which is found frequently in patients experiencing virologic failure during treatment with lamivudine-containing HAART (6,15). This mutation causes high-level resistance to lamivudine and (in combination with other mutations) reduces sensitivity to didanosine, zalcitabine, and abacavir (32). Other mutations