Break the Cycle

More and more data has emerged over the past few months showing that antiretroviral drug holidays can thwart long-term treatment success. Now a study in the journal AIDS has shown that a cyclical on-off treatment strategy is equally chancy. HIVers who adopted a four-months-on, two-months-off treatment schedule for 18 months were about three times more likely to have CD4-cell counts below 350 and were significantly more likely to develop resistance to nonnukes than those consistently taking anti-HIV meds.