[rlad]

The drug, Lenacapavir, is a capsid inhibitor. That means it prevents HIV virus from assembling into infectious particles by interfering with the production of the capsid and packaging of viral RNA into it.

This also means that it actually does not stop infection. Cells still get infected, but this drug prevents more virus from being produced.

My question is, since there are infected cells in these individuals, if they stop taking the drug aren’t they likely to become immediately highly infected, because the drug only interferes with viral replication while it is present in the body? Once infected, a cell is permanently infected.

I think this should be the case, unless infected cells are somehow killed off through some other mechanism: maybe they get lysed through an accumulation of partially formed capsids?

Seems important to know anyway