While the Hopkins findings await publication, Siliciano says the additional viral population makes it unlikely that HIV can be eradicated from the body, even though current therapies effectively reduce the replicating virus to levels undetectable by standard clinical techniques. According to the Hopkins team, the so-called second reservoir of HIV harbors unique HIV variants, or kinds of the virus that have generated in a patient, distinct from those that persist in a previously discovered reservoir in resting, CD4-positive T-cells.
The reservoir for HIV in resting CD4 cells harbors all of the major variants and all have the potential to reemerge from this reservoir at later times. However, recently published data by the Hopkins team on blips in HIV levels concludes that this archival virus is not mutating to become drug-resistant.
Scientific rationale for antiretroviral therapy in 2005. Robert Siliciano