Another Stab at Defining the Best Antiretroviral Combination

A retrospective review suggests that many of the most common regimens perform indistinguishably.

Research teams have had variable results in trying to identify the single “best” combination of antiretroviral drugs. Now, the statisticians try their hands by combing through the data from a giant meta-analysis of 12 European and North American cohort studies.

The participants were 17,666 antiretroviral-naive participants who started treatment from 1996 to 2003. Regimens consisted of a 2-NRTI backbone plus an additional NRTI (6% of patients), an NNRTI (26%), a PI (61%), or a ritonavir-boosted PI (7%). Among the conclusions after 55,622 person-years of follow-up:

When adjusted for factors including age, clinical stage, and baseline CD4-cell count, only nevirapine, among all the third-drug additions to a 2-NRTI backbone, was associated with a …

Reviewing Author

Abigail Zuger, MD

Another Stab at Defining the Best Antiretroviral Combination

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Reviewing Author