Drug resistance mutations among people living with HIV with treatment failure in Henan Province, China

The DRM status of people living with HIV (PLWH) refractory to ART (viral load >200 copies/mL) was assessed based on analysis of plasma samples derived from PLWH in the Sixth People's Hospital of Zhengzhou from June 2018 to April 2022. A phylogenetic tree was constructed using Molecular Evolutionary Genetic Analysis (MEGA) software (version X) based on the maximum likelihood method and general time reversible model with 1000 bootstrap replicates. Generally, a delay of few weeks to months existed between blood sampling for viral load determination and genotypic drug resistance analysis. [...]PLWH with poor adherence might have restarted their treatment regimens, which could have subsequently suppressed viremia and thus failure to genotypic drug resistance due to low viral load. Phylogenetic analysis based on the determined partial pol gene sequences indicated that the most common subtype was B, which accounted for 59.5%, followed by CRF01_AE, CRF07_BC, CRF55_01B, and CRF08_BC, which is consistent with subtype patterns in other regions[3,4] and our previous study.