BMJ  2007;334:1124-1125 (2 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.39205.386609.80

Editorials

Drug resistant HIV

Promising research on three new drugs provides hope for chronically infected patients

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

HIV has an impressive ability to replicate, mutate, and diversify, so developing drugs or vaccines that can fully contain the virus is a challenge. The only consistently successful way to prevent replication of HIV is to administer a potent combination regimen that contains at least two and preferably three antiretroviral drugs. Fortunately, with more than 20 antiretroviral drugs currently available, it is easy to construct such regimens for patients who are treatment naive.

However, a considerable number of patients have not had the chance to achieve full viral suppression despite access to antiretroviral drugs. These people are not well defined, but they generally began monotherapy with zidovudine in the early 1990s, and were sequentially exposed to each new drug as it became available (figureGo). This sequential use of suboptimal regimens led to the emergence of multidrug resistant HIV. These patients are often referred to as being in "deep salvage" . . . [Full text of this article]

Hiroyu Hatano, infectious diseases fellow, Steven G Deeks, associate professor of medicine

San Francisco General Hospital, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

sdeeks@php.ucsf.edu


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Kemp, D. W., Brown, J. N. (2009). Recent Advances in Pharmacotherapy. Journal of Pharmacy Practice 22: 446-466 [Abstract]  

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Disseminate Retroviral News Responsibly
Rajan TD
bmj.com, 4 Jun 2007 [Full text]
Activity of a new NNRTI, TMC125 (etravirine), in the presence of an old mutation, Y181C
Marie-Pierre de Béthune, et al.
bmj.com, 14 Jul 2007 [Full text]
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ