Background: Our purpose was to determine the prevalence of mutations of resistance to nucleoside inhibitors of reverse transcriptase (NIRT) and protease inhibitors (PI) in the HIV-1 genotype of naïve infected subjects in the prisons of the Autonomous Community of Valencia, Spain.
Patients and method: Multicentric, descriptive, cross-sectional study of prevalence including a systematic stratified and randomised sampling by centres. Demographic, clinical, virological and immunological data were collected. The HIV gene of protease and transcriptase was studied in peripheral blood plasma samples by means of double PCR amplification and subsequent automatic sequence. Reference: wild strain HXB2.
Results: Plasma was obtained from 133 individuals (119 men and 14 women). 117 samples were selected and the rest did not have enough copies for transcription. With regard to NIRT, 7 samples (5.2% of total) showed some mutation of resistance: M41L, D67N, L210W and K219Q, all them secondary to and associated with resistance to zidovudine, abacavir as well as group B multinucleoside-resistance. With regard to PI, only one sample showed a primary mutation, M46I, which was associated with resistance to indinavir. Moreover, a further 41 samples were found to express some secondary mutation.
Conclusions: In our series, there was a low number of primary mutations of resistance. These results allow us to exclude the systematic use of resistance tests before an initiation antiretroviral therapy.