XIII International HIV Resistance Workshop 8-12 June 2004, Tenerife

29 July 2004. Related: Conference reports, Conference index, Intl Drug Resistance Workshop 13 Tenerife 2004.

Simon Collins, HIV i-Base

This annual resistance meeting is an opportunity for over 200 key researchers to focus on current research into resistance and always provides some of the most interesting and important new data. Community, press and clinician attendance at this meeting is far more restricted than most other meetings.

The breadth of the meeting addressed in vivo research into cellular resistance to HIV replication and viral mutations driven by immune escape, in addition to specific complexities associated with resistance driven by drug pressure. A clear objective of the meeting is to move forward our understanding of the diversity, complexity and relevance of viral evolution and potential areas of future research.

Although there is a strong focus on preclinical and in vitro work, many of these studies have implications for clinical practice. As with HTB reports from previous meetings, this years’ reports will also largely focus on those studies with the most important relevance for current clinical practice.

These are:

• Risk of NNRTI-resistance during STI: implications for SMART and other STI studies

• Persistent nevirapine resistance following mother to child transmission interventions

• Tipranavir resistance and viral response: L90M did not reduce response, recommendation to use with T-20

• Resistance in the UK: new approach to epidemiological studies

• Low AZT activity against HIV-2 infection

• No evidence for cross resistance between nevirapine and d4T

• Experimental compounds to target viral expression in latent cells

• Case of MDR reinfection with MDR virus

The abstracts and programme for this meeting are due to be posted to the conference website. This usually takes a few weeks, but encouragingly most of the full posters also become available online.

http://www.informedhorizons.com

Early reports from the meeting, including selected abstracts and some full text studies, are already posted to the NATAP website:

http://www.natap.org

Unless otherwise stated, all references in these reports are to the Abstracts and Programme of the XIII International HIV Resistance Workshop, 8-12 June 2004, Tenerife.