Who Will Benefit from CCR5 Inhibitors?

When CCR5 inhibitors enter the marketplace in the near future, clinicians will need some guidance for selecting patients likely to benefit from these drugs. To this end, researchers evaluated clinical and epidemiologic data from patients screened for enrollment in a phase IIb trial of the CCR5 inhibitor vicriviroc.

The 391 subjects who provided samples for HIV coreceptor phenotype testing were all heavily treatment-experienced; 197 (50%) had virus that used CCR5 only, 16 (4%) had virus that used CXCR4 only, and 178 (46%) had dual-tropic virus or a mixed population. Median age was higher in the CCR5-tropic group than in the dual/mixed group (46 vs. 44 years), and white subjects were more likely than blacks to have CCR5-tropic virus; no differ…