Paul E. Sax, MD is the Editor-in-Chief, Journal Watch HIV/AIDS Clinical Care, Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
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(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)The FDA has approved an 800-mg tablet of darunavir for treatment naive patients. This single tablet will obviously replace the two darunavir 400-mg tablets in first-line therapy. (Yes, my math is that good.) Darunavir will still require 100-mg ritonavir boosting plus two NRTIs to make a complete regimen. Once upon a time I might have thought this [...]
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)In the latest treatment-naive trials of elvitegravir and dolutegravir, there’s a striking consistency in the results of the “test” regimen. Here are the studies, with the percentage of responders by treatment arm: Study 102: TDF/FTC/EFV (84%) vs. TDF/FTC/EVG/c (88%) — non-inferior Study 103: TDF/FTC + ATV/r (87%) vs. TDF/FTC/EVG/c (90%) — non-inferior SPRING-2: TDF/FTC or [...]
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)One of the most frequent criticisms of randomized clinical trials of HIV therapy is that certain patient groups — in particular gay men — are over represented compared to the HIV population as a whole. For example, in the recently published and presented clinical trials of the Quad and dolutegravir, women accounted for < 20% of [...]
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)Just published is the cleverly named “SPARTAN” study — spartan because it leaves out both NRTIs and ritonavir – and the results are very interesting. Ninety-three treatment-naive HIV-positive study subjects were randomized 2:1 to receive either a two-drug regimen of raltegravir 400 mg BID + atazanavir 300 mg BID, or a standard regimen of TDF/FTC + boosted [...]
(8 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)Just back from IAS 2011 (which was followed, I’m thrilled to say, with a visit to perhaps the most beautiful region in the world). Here is a Really Rapid Review™ of the meeting, with apologies ahead of time for lack of organization and (even more likely) leaving out something important. FYI, the abstracts are online [...]
(5 votes, average: 3.40 out of 5)Ok, I’ll admit it — I didn’t see any studies presented at CROI this year that will immediately transform HIV care on a day-to-day basis. Nothing that will alter practice right now. Nothing like last year’s NA-ACCORD, or 2008′s surprising DAD study, or 2007′s raltegravir studies, to name a few recent examples. (All subsequently published, of course — links [...]
