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About Drug Resistance and Resistance Testing
Drug resistance happens when HIV adapts, grows and multiplies while antiretroviral drugs are being taken. HIV is considered to be resistant when a drug or drugs stop(s) working to fight the virus.
Drug resistance is the most common cause of HIV treatment failure, and although drug resistance happens most often while a person is taking antiretroviral drugs, it is possible to have resistant virus without ever having taken antiretroviral drugs before. Resistance in people who have never taken drugs (treatment-naïve) happens when they are infected by a person with drug-resistant HIV. Therefore, it is possible for someone newly diagnosed, and not yet on antiretroviral treatment, to already be resistant to one or more of the drugs used in HIV therapy.
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