With antimicrobial resistance at the top of the World Health Organization’s top 10 global health threats of 2019, it’s only natural that resistance is also at top of mind for those on the frontlines of the HIV epidemic.

The success of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in keeping HIV-negative individuals from becoming infected has now triggered fears of possible drug resistance linked to prescribing the prevention treatment to persons with an undiagnosed HIV infection.

Investigators from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene culled data from cases assigned for partner services from November 2015 to August 2017 in New York City to examine the viral resistance profile and determine rates of mutations in recently diagnosed persons (< 12 months) with a recent history of PrEP (emtricitabine [3TC] [M184I/V/IV/MV] and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate [TDF] [K65R]) use. The team compared acute HIV infection, negative nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT), and prevalence of viral resistance in pre-diagnosis PrEP users and those who had never taken PrEP before.

The findings were presented in an oral abstract session at the Annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2019) on March 6, 2019. Read more via Contagion Live