Long-term impact of antiretroviral strategies for a functional HIV cure: A virtual clinical trial

摘要

The long-term benefit of combinatorial antiretroviral therapy (cART), as well as new therapeutic strategies, remain unknown. In this paper, mathematical modeling is employed not as a quantitative recapitulation of clinical data but as a tool to progress knowledge of a functional cure on the basis of Monte Carlo simulations as "virtual clinical trials". Considering that optimal cART is maintained about 50 years, simulations results suggested that about 50% simulation cases would be under detection levels (functional HIV cure). In addition, numerical results highlighted that the most effective time window for initiating cART is during the first month post-infection, giving about 89% of simulation cases with a functional cure after a ten-year-period of optimal cART.