The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7414 p212
19 August 2006

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Simpler regimen for maintenance HIV therapy

A pilot study has shown that a simple regimen of ritonavir-boosted atazanavir may be effective as maintenance therapy for some HIV-infected patients (JAMA 2006;296:806).

Researchers evaluated the regimen in 34 patients who had already achieved virologic suppression with a standard protease inhibitor (PI) based regimen that includes at least two nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs). Participants switched PIs to atazanavir-ritonavir at entry and discontinued their NRTIs after six weeks.

During the 24-week follow up, only three participants experienced virologic failure (two consecutive HIV-1 RNA measurements of 200 copies/ml or more). Resistance testing at failure did not identify protease inhibitor resistance mutations.