Objective:

To determine the prevalence of drug-resistant HIV-1 and the efficacy of first-line highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) regimens consisted of generic nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor and nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor among 339 study subjects in rural areas of Hubei province, China.

Methods:

Two cross-sectional studies were conducted to investigate 150 HAART-naive (99 received subsequent therapy) between 2003 and 2005 and 288 HAART-experienced patients mainly between 2005 and 2006. Patients' CD4+ T-cell count and viral load were determined. HIV-1 pol gene fragments were amplified from patients' plasma by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction, subsequently sequenced and analyzed.

Results:

About 83.5% of the patients were from rural villages. They were dominantly infected with subtype B'HIV-1 (96.7%) through paid blood donation (64.6%) and related blood transfusion (28.3%). We found that there was a steady increase of CD4 count over time among treated patients without detectable viral load (186/288, 64.6%). There was, however, an increasing prevalence of nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-and nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-resistant mutations among patients with detected viremia (102/288, 35.4%) after treatment for 3-6 (24.3%), 9-12 (57.1%), and 20-24 (63.3%) months, respectively. The increasing rates were associated with significant CD4 count drop and viral load increase. Some patients also developed multidrug-resistant mutants.

Conclusions:

We report the first HIV-1 drug resistance study after 2 years on HAART among Chinese patients living in rural villages. Our data suggest that a significant portion of patients are failing first-line regimens with a trend of AIDS progression. It is therefore necessary to maximize the drug adherence and to make affordable second-line HAART regimens available immediately. Our results have implications for implementing HAART in underresourced developing country settings.