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Medication resistant HIV
Aug 23, 2000

My partner recently found out he was HIV+, I have a resistant strain and he does not. could that mean he was infected by someone else? thank you

Response from Dr. Holodniy

Tricky question and tricky answer. You say he just found out he was positive. Is this a new, acute infection, or newly diagnosed, but old infection? Depending on his exposure level and when he was exposed to you, it could be non-resistant virus from you. For instance virus is resistant in you because most likely, virus is under the pressure of drugs. We know that HIV exists as many species within a given individual. Even if a genotype shows resistant virus, there is still non-resistant virus in the background. When you take the pressure of drugs away (like a treatment interruption in an infected person, or transmission into another person), the non-resistant virus will re-emerge as the dominant strain. This can happen relatively quickly after acute infection.


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