Evaluation of the Outcome of Antiviral Therapy among Individ-uals Infected HIV-1 in Suqian District of Jiangsu Province, China

Background: To evaluate the condition of antiviral therapy (ART) for individuals infected HIV-1 in Suqian district of Jiangsu Province, China. Methods: Altogether, 561 HIV-positive patients who received antiviral therapy in Suqian district in 2019 were re-cruited. EDTA anticoagulated blood was collected and separated to obtain the plasma samples. Viral load (VL) were tested for evaluating the outcome of ART. Then samples with VL beyond 1000IU/mL were used to conduct the molecular test in order to master the characters of HIV-1 and the prevalence of resistance strains. Results: VL results showed that the virus in 91.1% of the patients who received continuous antiviral treatment for more than 6 months were effectively inhibited (VL ≤ 1000 IU / ml). Among the 50 patients who failed in the treat-ment, 46 HIV-1 pol gene sequences were obtained, and the positive rate was 92.0%. The most prevalent strain was CRF_ 07bc (32.6%), and new epidemic strains, such as 67_01B、79_0107、87_cpx, were popular in this district. Drug resistance test results showed that 56.5% of the patients failed in antiviral treatment due to drug resistance, mainly resistant to the national first-line antiviral drug 3TC. Drug-resistant strains were not found in 43.5% of the patients. Conclusion: ART achieved a satisfied result in Suqian district, but the main cause resulting in ART-failure was re-sistant, so it is very necessary to enhance the education of adherence prior to the initiation of ART.