Clinical implications of new findings in HIV basic research.

HIV has been studied extensively over the past 25 years. Insights into the different stages of the virus' replication cycle and its interaction with host-cell proteins have led to the development of an armamentarium of effective antiretroviral medications. These antiviral drugs have dramatically changed the prognosis for HIV-infected subjects from an inevitable march towards death to a chronic disease with a potentially normal lifespan. Even with these successes, there is a continuing need to provide new drugs, especially those effective against drug-resistant viruses, to devise optimal strategies to prevent adverse events from either immunosuppression or the antiretroviral medications, and to develop treatments aimed at eliminating virus replication in the absence of antiviral drugs. In this review, how these important issues are being addressed will be highlighted, emphasizing clinical implications from some recent basic science studies and demonstrating how they could change the face of HIV therapeutics over the next 5-10 years.