Company insight Testing for treatment
During a perfect storm of public health emergencies, HIV research and treatment appears to have taken a back seat. Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Applied Biosystems HIV-1 Genotyping Kit helps provide labs with the ability to detect drug resistant strains of the disease and provides ready-to-use reagents, which deliver results from a single blood sample.
years, HIV is still a pressing issue worldwide. Now as monkeypox emerges on a global scale, HIV awareness may be even further frayed. An increase in accessibility of information, effective therapeutics, and improved diagnostics have helped to improve the standard of care for HIV in recent years, potentially causing some to feel comfortable shifting their focus, but millions of individuals around the world are still heavily impacted by the deadly virus. One of the most pressing issues that faces HIV management moving forward is the emergence of treatment-resistant strains. Most available antiretroviral therapeutics target the pol gene in the virus, whether it be the protease, reverse transcriptase or integrase, since this is the region of the virus that codes enzymes required for replication. While these can be effective treatments in some individuals, any cases of HIV that have strains with mutations in this gene could lead to them not working as intended.
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The lack of consensus Currently, the standard of care in both developed and developing nations is lacking uniform utility of drug resistance testing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), for instance, both do not recognise drug resistance testing for patient drug monitoring, instead only recommend using it as a tool for epidemiologic and genetic surveillance. This means that individuals diagnosed with HIV who are failing to respond to different treatments may not be tested to see if they are presenting a resistant strain and what therapeutic may be more effective instead. As a result, tests that identify alterations in the gene are imperative
Practical Patient Care /
www.practical-patient-care.com
hile Covid-19 has monopolised the attention of public health officials over the past two
Testing options are imperative as HIV continues to mutate around the world.
to staying ahead of the virus and making sure effective treatments can be found, but many labs have had to resort to tests they develop themselves, leading to less stability. Further pressing the need for better options, many commercial and laboratory developed tests (LDTs) were developed to monitor HIV subtype B, the predominant strain found in the late 1990s; while effective at the time, today these tests do not give clinicians the information they need to manage the diverse subtypes now found globally.
One step ahead Fortunately, Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Applied Biosystems HIV-1 Genotyping Kit with Integrase meets the current need, helping provide labs with the ability to detect drug resistant strains. The test is helpful in conducting reliable surveillance at a low cost by providing ready-to-use reagents and delivering results from RNA extracted from a single blood sample (dried blood spots or plasma). Testing options are going to be increasingly imperative as the virus continues to mutate around the world;
this will help provide the health community a chance to stay one step ahead of HIV, even as previous treatment options potentially run the risk of becoming less effective. It would also help ensure patients are quickly placed on the correct drug, as health care professionals would have access to information that could better inform which therapeutic would perform better. One of the most effective ways to continue to curb the spread, and limit the negative impact that the virus has, is to find the right treatment for the right patient at the right time, the first time. With diseases like Covid-19 and monkeypox emerging, many have neglected other crises, but public health officials still need to prepare for treatment resistant strains of HIV to wreak havoc on local populations around the world. An aware public, informed through continued communication about the risk of HIV, combined with clinicians equipped with proper tools, can potentially be an effective countermeasure. ●
www.thermofisher.com/hivdr 25
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