Henry, I wish you could explain more what do you mean with, "The time for resistance should be directly related to the viral load."
If you are talking about initial viral load I disagree, since theoretically, you can suppress full replication with the right combination of drugs, getting into all compartments, including brain and testis. Then, initial viral load is unimportant as long as you can achieve total suppression. And since T1/2 of HIV is about 6 hours, you should be able to see a drop to "0" within forty eight hours (if we had the test.)
If you are referring to the viral load as is measured once the patient is on treatment, then I would agree with you.
And, "eliminated", is a questionable term. We may be able to eliminate viral load, that is the ammount of virus particles in blood, but so far we can not eliminate the virus RNA which is attached to the Cellular DNA. Furthermore, has anybody answered the question of whether HIV infects permanent cells. |
