Combination of Raltegravir and Antiretroviral Therapy in HIV

The effect of integrase strand transfer inhibitor raltegravir (RAL) to standard antiretroviral therapy (ART) in patients with early HIV infection was tested. It was found that the addition of RAL was not associated with a difference in the quantity of HIV DNA, residual virus in the blood, or CD4+ T-cells containing replication-competent virus, according to a new study published in BioResearch Open Access. Ann Collier and a team of researchers from University of Washington and Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, MD, compared the effects of standard triple ART regimen to standard combination ART plus RAL over 96 weeks. They describe the study design and report their results in the article, "A Pilot Study of Raltegravir Plus Combination Antiretroviral Therapy in Early Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection: Challenges and Lessons Learned".

"The lessons learned from this pilot study will be informative to other researchers in this field, particularly in the design of future studies looking at the effects of ART in early HIV infection," says BioResearch Open Access Editor Jane Taylor, PhD, MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.



Source-Eurekalert