Keeping pace with current understanding of problems posed by antiretroviral drug resistance is crucial for any clinician who cares for individuals with HIV infection. Coupled with potent therapies, these assays enable clinicians to estimate rates of HIV replication and CD4 cell destruction. These estimates, in turn, help elucidate the phenomenon of drug resistance. HIV replicates at an extremely rapid rate throughout the course of disease. These mutations can and do include amino acid substitutions in genes that are the active sites of antiretroviral drug activity.
Some authorities speculate that at least one mutation at every possible site occurs daily.
By convention, this viral population is termed that person's wild-type virus. The wild-type HIV varies from person to person and even within an individual over time, but it tends to be relatively consistent in most infected individuals in a single geographic area. Kinetics of viral populations before and during antiretroviral therapy. Adding an antiretroviral drug to the internal environment of a patient can change the viral ecology dramatically. Such a mutant HIV will eventually have a selective growth advantage and become the dominant type in that person as long as the drug is administered.