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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(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)Got this challenging curbside consult from a colleague, and it has a interesting wrinkle: I have a longstanding patient with HIV who had many failed regimens in the 1990′s with resultant following mutations on a genotype done in 2003: NRTI (M184V, Q151M mutations); PI (A71, I54V, K20M, L10I, L90M, V82A mutations); no NNRTI resistance. She has been undetectable since [...]
(14 votes, average: 4.29 out of 5)Last week’s International AIDS Conference in Washington got plenty of media attention, mostly because it was the first time in umpteen years that it was held in the United States, the delay between meetings due to our absurd (and now repealed) immigration laws regarding HIV. (Quick trivia question — where was the conference supposed to [...]
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)It’s been several years since the “preferred” or “recommended” initial regimens for HIV treatment have been consolidated into one of the following four: TDF/FTC + efavirenz TDF/FTC + atazanavir/r TDF/FTC + darunavir/r TDF/FTC + raltegravir Any room for improvement in this “TDF/FTC + key third drug” approach? With the recent approval of TDF/FTC/rilpivirine, certainly this [...]
(6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)One famous HIV clinician/clinical researcher likens co-formulated TDF/FTC/EFV (Atripla) to a “Godzilla,” so dominant has the treatment become as initial therapy for HIV. He bases his comments on this study done at his institution, showing that in 2007, fully 85% of patients starting treatment in their clinic began TDF/FTC/EFV. Does this big lizard of a [...]
(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)From the FDA on Friday (it’s always on Friday, isn’t it): FDA approved Edurant (rilpivirine) 25 mg tablets, a new non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) for the treatment of HIV. Rilpivirine is an antiviral drug that helps to block reverse transcriptase, an enzyme necessary for HIV replication. The recommended dose of rilpivirine is one 25 [...]
