Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 viral load kinetics in plasma assessed by quantitative RT-PCR as an indicator of poor prognosis in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

HIV-1 eradication from infected individuals remains a major medical challenge. Combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) has led to a profound reduction in HIV-1-related morbidity and mortality. However, ART fails to eliminate HIV-1, as patients on ART still have residual viremia. The persistent viremia mainly arises from replication-competent proviruses in long-lived latently infected cells, which represent a major obstacle for HIV-1 eradication. One major effort to purge these latently infected cells has focused on developing the “shock and kill” approach for forcing provirus reactivation to induce cell killing. The “shock and kill” approach must be used with ART to prevent new infections. We studied the kinetic and mechanistic events of HIV-1 protein expression, virion production, and virus transmission and blockade during provirus reactivation. Our results suggest that ART regimens in clinical application of the “shock and kill” approach should contain PIs plus RT inhibitors to simultaneously prevent and inhibit new infection from provirus-activated cells.