Researchers at the University Hospitals (UH) Translational Laboratory, part of Cleveland's Case Medical Center, have developed new tests to show earlier if an HIV patient is resistant to certain drugs, the Plain Dealer reported.
The main benefit to the two new tests is that doctors can alter an HIV-positive patient's treatment earlier in the disease's existence if certain drug is not working. If the is not responding to one treatment, the doctor can detect that earlier than ever before.
According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), there are 36 retroviral drugs available for adults with HIV and 28 for children infected with the disease. Doctors will treat patients with three antiretroviral drugs at one time to test the effectiveness of the drug in a patient's immune system.
HIV makes drug resistance hard to avoid because it has the ability to replicate itself over and over, strengthening the virus against treatment. When this happens, physicians are forced to change a patient's regimen.
The two new tests are called ViralARTS and DEEPGEN and they use gene sequencing for a lab result turnaround of five to ten days. Both were tested and validated at Case Western Reserve University.
Miguel Quiñones-Mateu, scientific director of the translational laboratory at UH and assistant professor of pathology at CWRU, said the transitional lab is getting into a market controlled by two other companies.
"Current tests are able to detect drug-resistant viruses with a sensitivity of 20 percent," he said. "We decided to develop something similar and better."
Quiñones-Mateu, who developed the two tests with Eric Arts, professor of medicine at CWRU School of Medicine, said if the virus were to be present at frequencies below the 20-percent threshold, pervious tests would miss it.
"With our new HIV tests we are able to detect these mutant viruses at frequencies as low as 1 percent," Quiñones-Mateu said. "This will give the opportunity to the physicians to 'see' the mutant viruses many months in advance."
