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The HIV Drug Resistance Crisis and the Advent of New Therapies
Approximately 40,000 new HIV infections are diagnosed in the US each year. In time, most of these cases progress to AIDS, which is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Approximately one million people in the US are estimated to be living with this disease. Once considered fatal, HIV infection has increasingly become a chronic, treatable disease with the advent of 20 FDA-approved antiviral drugs for HIV treatment and over 50 more in development.
The approved HIV drugs generally fall into four classes: nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), protease inhibitors (PIs) and entry inhibitors. There is currently only one approved entry inhibitor, but many more are in clinical development.
Antiviral drugs are generally used in various combinations to treat HIV-infected patients. For greatest efficacy, combination therapy requires each drug in the combination to be active, interfering with key viral functions. If any of the drugs are not active, the combination therapy will likely fail more quickly. Each treatment failure leaves the patient with fewer future treatment options. Drug-resistant viruses can also be transmitted to newly infected individuals, increasing the risk that initial treatment for those individuals will not work.
Although new antiviral drugs with increased potency and activity against drug-resistant viruses are under development, the ability of HIV to mutate and replicate continues to challenge physicians, who face the complex task of identifying the most appropriate therapy for an individual patient. Thus, it is critical that physicians use Monogram's resistance testing technology to optimize the selection of drugs and ensure that patients receive the most effective combination of drugs possible.
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