Fig. 1.

Study schema of 126 HIV-infected antiretroviral therapy-naive adult participants with AIDS-defining illness or a CD4⁺ T-lymphocytes less than 250 cells/μl enrolled in this observational cohort study in Lima, Peru.

Forty-four participants (22 women and 22 men) were excluded from the current analysis because of lost to follow-up (LTFU), death or virologic failure (plasma HIV RNA >1000 copies/ml). Eighty-two of 126 participants who initiated first-line nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase (NNRTI) based-ART completed the 2-year study with their plasma HIV RNA suppressed to a median of less than 30 copies/ml. During 2 years of suppressive ART, low-level viremias (LLV), defined as HIV RNA between 30 and 1000 copies/ml, were detected in 33 of 82 (40%) of ART-suppressed participants at a median 73 copies/ml (IQR: 40–139). ART, antiretroviral therapy.