Treatment Breaks With Nonnukes Show a Higher Risk of Failure

Treatment interruptions may be riskiest if the regimen being stopped contains a nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor or if the new regimen following the break contains an NNRTI drug, researchers reported at the 44th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. The researchers followed 45 HIV patients'all of whom had undetectable viral loads and CD4-cell counts of at least 350'who began treatment interruptions. Thirty-three of the study subjects were taking an NNRTI-based drug regimen before their drug breaks, and 34 of the patients reinitiated therapy with an NNRTI regimen following their breaks. Only 15 of the 34 patients resuming NNRTI drugs achieved undetectable viral loads three months after restarting treatment, significantly less than those restarting therapy with a protease inhibitor'based regimen.