Ritonavir

Norvir (100 mg ritonavir; Abbvie, North Chicago, IL, USA) and Nexium (40 mg esomeprazole; AstraZeneca, London, UK) tablets were ordered via the hospital pharmacy of the University Hospitals Leuven (UZ Leuven, Leuven, Belgium).

Chinese rhesus macaques (n = 18) that were confirmed to be seronegative for SIV, STLV-1 (simian T leukemia virus type 1), SRV-1 (simian type D retrovirus 1) and herpes B viruses were infected with SIVmac251 at 10 AID50 intravenously. Four days post-infection, 11 out of 18 animals were treated daily with tenofovir (TFV, 20 mg/kg; Gilead, Foster City, CA, USA) and emtricitabine (FTC, 40 mg/kg; Gilead) subcutaneously and raltegravir (RAL, 20 mg/kg; Merck, Kenilworth, NJ, USA) or dolutegravir (DTG, 5 mg/kg; ViiV, London, UK) and ritonavir (RTV, 20 mg/kg; Abbvie, North Chicago, IL, USA) orally, as previously described [48 (link)]. From the 11 ART-treated animals, n  =  3 received ART for the duration of the study until they had an undetectable plasma viral load and were euthanized at that time (SIV[+]/ART). n  =  8 had analytic therapy interruption (SIV[+]/ATI) at different time points after SIV suppression, and the animals were euthanized when they had a detectable plasma viral load. This duration varied from 10 to 28 days, with two animals requiring 159 and 161 days to rebound. Several animals (n = 7) did not receive ART (SIV[+]) and were euthanized 38 to 104 days post-infection. The animals were sacrificed at different time points post-infection, and the harvesting of the plasma, CSF and brain was performed immediately after the sacrifice [48 (link)].