HIV-DRIVES: HIV Drug Resistance Identification, Variant Evaluation, & Surveillance Pipeline

The global prevalence of resistance to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) emphasizes the need to continuous monitoring to better understand the dynamics of drug-resistant mutations to guide treatment optimization and patient management as well as check the spread of resistant viral strains. We have recently, integrated next-generation sequencing (NGS) into routine HIV drug resistance (HIVDR) monitoring, with key challenges in the bioinformatic analysis and interpretation of the complex data generated while ensuring data security and privacy of patient information. To address these challenges, here, we present HIV-DRIVES (HIV Drug Resistance Identification, Variant Evaluation, and Surveillance), an NGS-HIVDR bioinformatics pipeline that has been developed and validated using Illumina short-reads, FASTA, and sanger ab1.seq files. Availability and implementation HIV-DRIVES source codes and operation manual freely available at . ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This study did not receive any funding ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: Research Ethics Committee of the National Health Laboratory Services, Kampala Uganda waived ethical approval for this work I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Yes The data generated from the National Genomics Reference Laboratory housed at the Central Public Health Laboratories is available upon request.