The European Consensus on clinical management of HIV-1 tropism testing has developed guidelines for the use of tropism tests.These Guidelines have been published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases and can be download from the publisher website:
European guidelines on the clinical management of HIV-1 tropism testing
Writing committee
LPR Vandekerckhove, AMJ Wensing, R Kaiser, F Brun-Vézinet, B Clotet, A De Luca, Dressler, F Garcia PhD, AM Geretti, T Klimkait, K Korn, B Masquelier, CF Perno, JM Schapiro, V Soriano, A Sönnerborg, A-M Vandamme, C Verhofstede, H Walter, Zazzi & CAB Boucher,.
Viral tropism
Viral tropism is the ability of viruses to enter and infect specific host cells and is based on the ability of viruses to bind to receptors on those cells.Testing for HIV tropism is recommended before prescribing a chemokine receptor blocker. In most European countries, HIV tropism is identified with tropism phenotype testing. New data support genotype analysis of the HIV third hypervariable loop (V3) for the identification of tropism.
The panel recommends HIV-tropism testing for the following groups:
- drug-naive patients in whom toxic effects are anticipated or for whom few treatment options are available;
- patients who have poor tolerability to or toxic effects from current treatment or who have CNS pathology;
- patients for whom therapy has failed and a change in treatment is considered.