2011

Guidelines for London prescribing of antiretroviral drugs in 2011 The London HIV Consortium, the pan-London commissioning group for HIV services, has just outlined the results of the tender process for purchasing HIV drugs for the next two years. This is …

Guide to clinical trials (Russian) Клинические исследования: учебное пособие для активистов PDF (640 Kb)

HTB survey 2011 This year we are asking readers to help us by completing a short online survey about the publication HIV Treatment Bulletin and about i-Base in general. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8QQLN6X Your feedback is really important to us. Please take a …

Wednesday 30 March 2011 6–8pm After the success of the last treatment training session with Dr Tristan Barber,  i-Base are organising another question and answer workshop. This will include an update from the research presented at the CROI conference last …

Bite size news from CROI today includes links to interesting studies on new drugs in development. This includes: an integrase inhibitor that works against raltegravir resistance a new oral entry inhibitor a formulation of tenofovir in early development first results …

One of the first oral sessions of the conference included several presentations that should generate excited discussions. The first of these is for a new approach to an immune-based treatment called SB-728. Before anything else, it is important to recognise …

The 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) is being held from 27 February – 3rd March 2011. This is the most important annual scientific HIV meeting. Online presentations Within a day or two, the conference puts all oral …

low level resistance – when there is some resistance but it does not have any significant impact on how well a drug works.  The HIV drug is still sensitve and is  considered active.

viral load – the amount of virus in a sample of blood or other fluid. With HIV this is commonly the amount of HIV in a millilitre (mL) of blood. See viral load test.

selective pressure – this is when a factor in the environment causes one type of organism to develop and grow in preference to another. With HIV drug resistance, the presence of a drug exerts selective pressure for resistance to develop. …

RNA – an abbreviation for the scientific word for genetic material found in some types of viruses. It is the abbreviation for ribonucleic acid. It is very similar to DNA but is single-strand rather than the double-strand in DNA. See …

compensatory mutation – this refer to an additional mutation, usually in the context of the fitness of a virus. For example, the mutations that stop a drug form working often stop the virus from reproducing as well. Additional mutations that …

revertant mutation – this term is used in two ways. Firstly when referring to a genetic change that shows the virus is returning from a drug resistant mutation back to a wild-type genotype. This can sometimes take several stages. For …

reverse transcriptase – an enzyme unique to HIV. It is used to convert single-strand RNA into double-strand DNA. This is needed before HIV’s genetic material can be integrated in the human DNA. HIV drugs that stop this process are called …

superinfection – another term for reinfection.

reinfection – catching HIV a second time. When an HIV-positive becomes infected with second strain or type of HIV. Sometimes called superinfection.

phenotype test – a type of drug resistance that tests whether a drug is sensitive or resistance to a sample of HIV.

partially active – the HIV treatment in question will work against this virus but this is reduced compared to wild-type HIV. This is the same as partial resistance, or intermediate resistance etc.

nucleotide – the building blocks of the genetic code (DNA/RNA). Also called a base.

secondary mutation – see minor mutation.