HIV-1 variant decay.

aBased on the region of env (V1/V2 or V4/V5) that was the most reproducible by two independent HTA replicates.
bReported half-lives are the average calculated from decay analyses of two independent HTA replicates. N/A = not applicable.
cPercent difference values between plasma and CSF viral populations as measured by HTA. Reported values are the average calculated from two independent HTA replicates (see refs. [39],[41] for methods).
dTotal CSF viral load increased initially for subject 5002.
eTotal plasma viral decay for subject 5003 was calculated for the drop in viral load from days 3 to 6 on HAART. There was a slight increase in plasma viral load from days 6 to 10 on HAART, which can be seen in Figure 2B, but this increase does not seem to be significant. Although the baseline samples were not available for analysis, we know that the baseline plasma viral load was 126,000 copies/ml, and this subject had undetectable viral loads in both plasma and CSF by 2 months post-HAART, so there was an overall good response to antiretroviral therapy. The small variation in plasma viral load from days 6 to 10 on therapy could be explained by a number of technical, pharmacological, and/or biological factors.
fA compartmentalized variant was detected for subject 4021 in the day 5 CSF sample; however, the relative abundance of this variant was less than other bands detected that were not reproducible by HTA, indicating that the detection of this band may be due to inefficient sampling and low viral load. It is equally possible that this band represents a reproducible compartmentalized variant that is decaying more slowly than the other variants detected by HTA. Therefore, the half-life for the CSF-compartmentalized variants is listed as >1.59 days (a half-life of 1.59 days was measured for CSF shared variants).