Description
Following initial infection, very high levels (more than a million copies per ml) of HIV-1 viral RNA are measurable in plasma for a few weeks. Subsequently, without anti-retroviral treatment, the viral load (VL) usually settles down to a fairly stable ‘set point’ characteristic of each patient, where it may remain for a number of asymptomatic years. This set point level has prognostic significance, since the viral load quartile in a cohort of 209 men predicted:
• progression to AIDS by 5 years,
• median time to development of AIDS,
• proportion who died within 5 years,
• median survival time.
