Preface [Hot Topic: Management of HIV-1 Drug Resistance: From Novel Drugs and Targets to Clinical Benefit Assessement (Guest Editor: Giovanni Maga)]

HIV therapy has well established and substantial clinical benefits. However, all antiretroviral agents can cause both short-term and long-term toxicities. This is a particularly vexing problem as current data does not allow accurate predictions of treatment toxicities and, in many cases, side effects are only partially reversible. Moreover, therapy is frequently associated with the selection of drug-resistant viral isolates and incomplete viral suppression. This is commonly caused by inadequate medication adherence and leads to increasingly severe virologic failure. The present issue will address both the advantages of current HIV therapy as well as the ongoing challenges in its application. A major focus will be on the development of novel strategies, both in terms of novel targets / drugs and of improved therapeutic applications of currently available medicaments.