Current review and clinical management of patients with primary HIV-1 infection: limits and perspectives

Acute primary HIV-1 infection (PHI) remains underestimated or misdiagnosed in clinical practice. Meanwhile, it has been demonstrated that early therapeutic interventions with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) may delay disease progression and possibly preserve and expand the most effective immune effector T-cells against HIV together with the humoral immune responses. Since long-life HAART is an unachievable goal due to long-term toxicity and risk of occurrence of resistant strains due to a decreased compliance or other still undefined host factors, preliminary data of programmed treatment interruption in patients treated for PHI suggest that a significant number (30–50%) could benefit from long periods off therapy. However, in more than half of them, the viral load will rebound, justifying that treatment be reinitiated. In order to reduce this proportion, new options are currently being investigated, including adjunctive immune therapy to HAART such as cytokines or vaccines, which could tackle the viral rebounds by increasing HIV-specific cellular responses. An update on the management of patients with PHI is reviewed and the limits of the current standard of care are discussed.