OBJECTIVETo study the drug resistance status on HIV-1 patients who had been treated with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and those treatment-naive ones in Hubei province.

METHODSNested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to amplify 2 kb DNA fragment in HIV pol gene from peripheral blood of the HIV infected patients and the PCR products were sequenced. The sequences were compared to the Stanford HIV drug resistance database.

RESULTSNineteen patients were treated with regimens composed of two Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NRTIs) and one Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NNRTI), with 25 patients as treatment-naive. Some protease (PR) drug-resistant mutations were found in these samples, such as D30N (2.27%), D30G (2.27%), M46I (4.55%), M46N (2.27%), I47V (4.55%), I84V (4.55%), I84L (2.27%), N88S (2.27%) and L90S (2.27%) that all belonged to major drug-resistant but A71T (29.55%) belonged to minor resistance mutations Five treated patients were detected having mutations associated RT drug resistance: M41L (5.26%), A62V (5.26%),D67N (5.26%), L210W (5.26%), T215Y (15.79%); K103E (5.26%), K103N (10.53%), Y181C (5.26%), G190A (5.26%), K238N (5.26%), while five treatment-naive patients were detected to have had mutations associated RT drug resistance M184V (4%), K65N (4%), Y115M (4%), F116L (4%), M184I (4%), V179D (4%), G190R (4%).Some additional mutations were detected in RT whose role involve in drug resistance still remained unknown. F214L was positively associated with HAART treatment (P = 0.03).

CONCLUSIONSignificant differences were found between drug resistance mutations to RTIs in treated and treat-naive patients in Hubei province,indicating that drugs had affected the occurrence of drug resistance mutations. At the same time, novel RT mutations F214L might be associated with HAART or some other drugs.