Quantitative effects of valacyclovir on the replication of cytomegalovirus (CMV) in persons with advanced human immunodeficiency virus disease: Baseline CMV load dictates time to disease and survival

Virus load is a major risk factor for disease in many human viral infections, especially human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease. The effect of cytomegalovirus (CMV) load on disease progression and the influence of antiviral chemotherapy on surrogate markers of replication was investigated in 310 patients with advanced HIV disease in a randomized controlled trial that compared the effects of valacyclovir with those of acyclovir, Sequential blood and urine samples were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), for human CMV (HCMV) DNA, In multivariate analyses, elevated virus load in both blood and urine at baseline was associated with increased risk of HCMV disease (relative hazard, 1.49 and 1.44 per log increase, respectively), Elevated virus load in blood at baseline was also associated with a significantly shorter survival time (log rank, P=.0001). In time-updated analyses, valacyclovir significantly suppressed the virus load in subjects who were PCR positive at baseline tin blood or urine), when compared with the combined acyclovir arms.