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For years, effective antiretroviral treatment has required HIV-positive patients to take a large handful of pills and capsules every day to stay healthy. Those days are now drawing to a close. In an industry-supported open-label trial, researchers randomized 517 treatment-naive HIV-positive patients to receive either a standard combination antiretroviral regimen (AZT, 3TC, and efavirenz) or a newer regimen (tenofovir, FTC, and efavirenz). Both regimens involved taking three pills daily.
At 48 weeks of treatment, 73% of the AZT group and 84% of the tenofovir group had undetectable viral loads (<400 copies/mL), and mean CD4 counts had increased by 158 and 190 cells/mm3, respectively. Both of these differences were significant. Treatment-limiti…