Viral evolution host exercise and immunity impacting HIV disease progression in children living with HIV in India

Abstract

This thesis offers new data that enhances our understanding of the contributory factors leading to HIV drug resistance evolution during early antiretroviral treatment (ART) in children and also explored the emerging area of complementary therapies in conjunction with ART to control the HIV associated inflammation and immune activation. The data from the next generation sequencing (NGS) of HIV-1 DNA inform substantively about the evolution of minority drug resistant viral variants during early therapy that calls for the re-evaluation of the pediatric focused dosing strategies and indicate the careful selection of first line ART regimen for children. This thesis is organized as follows. Chapter I provide the background of this thesis. Chapter II states the rationale of the study along with the aims and objectives. Chapter III describes the materials and methods used in addressing the aims of the thesis. Chapter IV includes the results and Chapter V provides discussion of the work presented in this thesis. Chapter VI includes conclusions and future perspectives. newline