These guidelines are intended as an update to those published in the Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine in 2014 and the update on when to initiate antiretroviral therapy in 2015. Since the release of the previous guidelines, the scale-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in southern Africa has continued. New antiretroviral drugs have become available with improved efficacy, safety and robustness. The guidelines are intended for countries in the southern African region, which vary between lower and middle income.

Background In resource-limited settings, many patients, with no prior PI treatment on a second-line, high genetic barrier, ritonavir boosted protease inhibitor (PI) containing regimen have virologic failure. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional survey to investigate the aetiology of virologic failure in two public health antiretroviral clinics in South Africa documenting the prevalence of virologic failure (HIV RNA load > 500 copies/ml) and genotypic antiretroviral resistance; and lopinavir hair and plasma concentrations in a nested case-control study. Results Ninety three patients treated with a second-line regimen including lopinavir boosted with ritonavir were included, of whom 50 (25 cases, with virologic failure and 25 controls) were included in a nested case control study. Of 93 patients 37(40%) had virological failure, only 2 of which had had major protease inhibitor mutations. The negative predictive values: probability of failure with lopinavir plasma concentration > 1μg/mL or hair concentrations > 3.63ng/mg for virologic failure were 86% and 89%, and positive predictive values of low concentrations 73% and 79%, respectively, whereas all virologic failures with HIV RNA loads above 1000 copies/ml, of patients without protease inhibitor resistance, could be explained by either having a low lopinavir concentration in plasma or hair. Conclusions Most patients who fail a LPV/r regimen, in our setting, have poor lopinavir exposure. A threshold plasma lopinavir concentration (indicating recent LPV/r use) and/or hair concentration (indicating longer term lopinavir exposure) are valuable in determining the aetiology of virologic failure and identifying patients in need of adherence counselling or resistance testing.

Resistance of HIV to first-line therapy is predictable at 12 months when evaluated by means of HIV RNA monitoring and, when detected, largely preserves second-line therapy options. Optimizing adherence, performing resistance surveillance, and improving treatment monitoring are critical for long-term prevention of drug resistance.

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ObjectivesSouth Africa’s national antiretroviral (ARV) treatment program expanded in 2010 to include the nucleoside reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors (NRTI) tenofovir (TDF) for adults and abacavir (ABC) for children. We investigated the associated changes in genotypic drug resistance patterns in patients with first-line ARV treatment failure since the introduction of these drugs, and protease inhibitor (PI) resistance patterns in patients who received ritonavir-boosted lopinavir (LPV/r)-containing therapy.MethodsWe analysed ARV treatment histories and HIV-1 RT and protease mutations in plasma samples submitted to the Tygerberg Academic Hospital National Health Service Laboratory.ResultsBetween 2006 and 2012, 1,667 plasma samples from 1,416 ARV-treated patients, including 588 children and infants, were submitted for genotypic resistance testing. Compared with 720 recipients of a d4T or AZT-containing first-line regimen, the 153 recipients of a TDF-containing first-line regimen were more likely to have the RT mutations K65R (46% vs 4.0%; p<0.001), Y115F (10% vs. 0.6%; p<0.001), L74VI (8.5% vs. 1.8%; p<0.001), and K70EGQ (7.8% vs. 0.4%) and recipients of an ABC-containing first-line regimen were more likely to have K65R (17% vs 4.0%; p<0.001), Y115F (30% vs 0.6%; p<0.001), and L74VI (56% vs 1.8%; p<0.001). Among the 490 LPV/r recipients, 55 (11%) had ≥1 LPV-resistance mutations including 45 (9.6%) with intermediate or high-level LPV resistance. Low (20 patients) and intermediate (3 patients) darunavir (DRV) cross resistance was present in 23 (4.6%) patients.ConclusionsAmong patients experiencing virological failure on a first-line regimen containing two NRTI plus one NNRTI, the use of TDF in adults and ABC in children was associated with an increase in four major non- thymidine analogue mutations. In a minority of patients, LPV/r-use was associated with intermediate or high-level LPV resistance with predominantly low-level DRV cross-resistance.

BACKGROUND: In 1998 we estimated that 34/million infectious window period donations were entering the blood supply at the South African National Blood Service. Selective use of donations based on donor race-ethnicity reduced this risk to 26/million donations but was deemed unethical. Consequently, in 2005 South African National Blood Service eliminated race-ethnicitybased collection policies and implemented individual-donation nucleic acid testing (ID-NAT). We describe the change in donor base demographics, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) detection rates, and transfusion-transmissible HIV risk. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS:In ten years 7.7 million donations were tested for anti-HIV and HIV RNA. Number of donations, HIV prevalence, ID-NAT yield rate, serology yield rate and residual transfusion-transmissible HIV risk were analyzed by donor type, race-ethnicity, age, and sex. Multiple regression analysis was performed to investigate the determinants of HIV-positive and nucleic acid testing yield donations. RESULTS:The combined strategy of increasing donations from black donors and implementing ID-NAT increased the proportion of donations from black donors from 6% in 2005 to 30% in 2015 (p < 0.00001), and reduced the transfusion-transmissible risk from 24 to 13 per million transfusions. ID-NAT interdicted 481 (1:16,100) seronegative window period donations, while one transfusiontransmissible case (0.13 per million) was documented. Race-ethnicity and donor type were highly significant predictors of HIV positivity, with adjusted odds ratio for first-time donors of 12.5 (95% confidence interval, 11.9-13.1) and for black race-ethnicity of 31.1 (95% confidence interval, 28.9-33.4). The proportion of serology yields among HIV-infected donors increased from 0.27% to 2.4%. CONCLUSION: ID-NAT enabled the South African NationalBlood Service to increase the number of donations from black donors fivefold while enhancing the safety of the blood supply.A ccording to a "between-census" community survey done in 2016 that sampled 1.3 million households of the 56 million people living in South Africa, approximately 7.06 million people are human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive, providing an estimated adult HIV prevalence and incidence of 18% and 0.91 per 100 person-years, respectively. 1 In this environment, the South African National Blood Service (SANBS) collects approximately 800,000 blood donations annually from voluntary nonremunerated blood donors, which are processed into blood components that are provided to approximately 400,000 patients each year. ABBREVIATIONS: ART = antiretroviral therapy; FT = first-time; ID-NAT = individual donation nucleic acid testing; MID 50 = 50% minimum infectious dose; p24Ag = p24 antigen; SANBS = South African National Blood Service; TT = transfusion-transmitted; WP = window period.

If the BED method is to be used for the accurate estimation of HIV incidence from cross-sectional surveys, it will be essential, before other statistical adjustment methods, to identify, at least, all cases who are on ART and all those with CD4 counts < 50 cells per microliter. The more general remaining problem is the unequivocal identification of all persons with long-term HIV infections.

In resource-constrained settings, a combination of preselection of patients with low pretest probability of virologic failure and pooled testing can reduce the cost of virologic monitoring without compromising accuracy.