HIV Resistance Products
Virco's goal is to provide physicians and people living with HIV/AIDS with accurate, reliable and essential information about the individual's virus and its susceptibility or resistance to antiretroviral drugs. In this way our aim is to help doctors make well informed decision about the optimal treatment strategy for each individual.
Resistance Testing
The two basic approaches to measuring HIV drug resistance are Phenotyping (measuring in vitro the ability of an antiretroviral drug to suppress the virus) and Genotyping (establishing the profile of the virus in terms of mutations associated with drug resistance).
Virco's Antivirogram® is a conventional phenotype assay which has been shown in a prospective clinical trial to be predictive of clinical outcome. 1
Now, in addition to conventional phenotyping and genotyping, Virco provides an alternative way to measure viral susceptibility or resistance and interpret this information in a clinically relevant context. virco®TYPE HIV-1 combines genotypic and phenotypic information to give both a qualitative and a quantitative assessment of viral susceptibility or resistance. Combined with Clinical Cut-Off values, a virco®TYPE HIV-1 test provides a refined and essential assessment of HIV-1 drug resistance.
The virco®TYPE HIV-1 analysis and interpretation has been clinically validated both prospectively in a number of clinical trials and by recent comparative retrospective analysis against various genotypic algorithms in large cohorts. These recent comparative analysis provide confirmation that vircoTYPE HIV-1 calculations are the most up-to-date and clinically accurate method available for analyzing genotypic data. Please see the section Accuracy and Validation.
Contrary to many other HIV-1 resistance tests, virco®TYPE HIV-1 with clinical cutoffs indicates in a quantitative way how resistance is expected to affect virologic response.
Availability
Virco provides its products and services worldwide through a network of partnerships and distributors. For more information, please click here.
References
1. Cohen CJ et al, and the VIRA 3001 study team. A randomized trial assessing the impact of phenotypic resistance testing on antiretroviral therapy. 2002. AIDS 16:579-588. 2a. Mazotta, F. et al., _Real versus VirtualPhenotype to guide treatment in heavily pretreated patients: 48-week follow-up of the Gentipo-Fenotipo de Rezistencia (GenPheRex) Trial, J. Acquir Immune Defic Syndr 2003; 32:268-280 2b. Saracino A. et al., "Change of antiretroviral therapy guided by Genotypic or Phenotypic Resistance testing: an open-label, randomized, multi-center study" (PhenGen). Poster 3.8 presented at the 1st European HIV Drug Resistance Workshop, Luxembourg. 2c. Perez-Elias M.J., et al. and the Realvirfen Study Group. "Phenotype or VirtualPhenotype for choosing antiretroviral therapy after failure: a prospective, randomized study." Antiviral Therapy 2003; 8: 577-584