Sir — Elegant studies using early, frequently sampled patients on nevirapine and protease inhibitors (ABT-538 and L-735.524) have now made it possible to calculate the rapid turnover of HIV-1 viri-ons in infected patients: the rate of plasma retroviral decay revealed a half-time of about 2 days for free virus particles or virus-producing cells, indicating that about 30% of the plasma virus population in infected patients is replaced every day. These observations have important implications for our understanding of HIV pathogenesis, and here, using a similar analysis in our previously analysed cohort of 11 AZT-treated patients, we confirm the earlier findings.
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