Genotyping and Pre-treatment drug resistance surveillance among ART- naive HIV-1 patients in Tunisia

Drug resistance to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a major factor of treatment failure. The resistance monitoring before treatment allows to avoid the first-line antiretroviral therapy failure and improves treatment outcomes. Very little data are available about the prevalence of HIV drug-resistance in Tunisia, especially among ART-naïve people. In this study, we aim to investigate HIV-1 primary drug resistance patterns of reverse transcriptase (RT) and protease (PR), using Sanger sequencing Technology. For that, we partially sequenced 77 viral RNA samples collected from 77 treatment-naïve Tunisian and African PLHIV, using The Applied Biosystems™ HIV-1 Genotyping Kit allowing the genotyping of the RT and PRregions of the HIV-1 pol gene.