HIVDRD

What is this study about?

The study was coordinated by CTU until 2016 and is now run from the UCL Research Department of Infection and Population Health.

The introduction of highly-active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in the mid 1990s has led to a reduction in deaths and an improvement in HIV patients’ health and quality of life. But the HIV virus can mutate (or change) and become resistant to different drugs, which can limit treatment options.

Resistance tests are carried out in patients who show signs of failing their drug regimen and now, as a result of the findings of the Database, pre-therapy testing is routine practice.

The UK HIV Drug Resistance Database brings together information collected from all these HIV drug resistance tests carried out in the UK. This helps researchers to:

• Understand how resistance testing can help doctors to treat people with HIV more effectively
• Estimate how widespread drug resistance is, and how this changes over time
• Look at how different mutations of the HIV virus affect drug resistance

The Database is unique because it is extensively linked with patient data within several clinical cohorts in the UK, which means that analyses can be performed that give important insights into the epidemiology and clinical aspects of HIV drug resistance.

The findings of the Database are important in understanding the epidemiology of transmitted drug resistance. Analyses carried out on drug-naïve patients give insights into transmitted drug resistance (TDR). Analyses on drug-experienced patients indicate the extent of resistance within and across drug classes and estimates of the number of individuals with multi-class resistance. All of these data are vital for the clinical management of HIV at a local and national level.

Type of study

Observational study

Contact details

iph.hivrdb@ucl.ac.uk

Who is funding the study?

Primary funding is provided by the Medical Research Council. The study was originally established through funding from the Department of Health. Additional funding has been provided by Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead, Pfizer, Roche, and Tibotec, a division of Janssen-Cilag Ltd.