Patent ID: 7217506

Claim:
A method for evaluating the effectiveness of a protease inhibitor as an antiviral therapy for a patient infected with at least one mutant HIV strain comprising: (i) collecting a sample from an HIV-infected patient; (ii) extracting the nucleic acid from said patient sample; (iii) determining the amino acid sequence encoded by said nucleic acid; (iv) determining whether said amino acid sequence comprises at least one mutation selected from R41S, R41T, R41I, R41G and K70E in the protease region; (v) measuring the effectiveness of said protease inhibitor against said mutant HIV strain; (vi) correlating the presence of said at least one mutation of step (iv) to a change in the effectiveness of said protease inhibitor against said mutant HIV strain relative to the effectiveness of said protease inhibitor against a wild type HIV strain (HIV IIIB/LAI reference sequence).