Can Protease Inhibitor Resistance Be Combatted?

A retrospective study of 136 HIV-infected patients conducted by theUniversity of California at San Francisco found that more than half had failed combination protease inhibitor-based therapy. These data were reported at the 37th Intersciences Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Toronto, Canada.

According to Steven Deeks, assistant professor of medicine in the UCSF AIDS program, this was a "real world study," in which patients were not "the idealized research patient typically found in a clinical trial, but the average patient seen by physicians in a public hospital."

Of about 450 patients who were seen at San Francisco General Hospital, almost 200 had received protease inhibitor therapy, eg with Merck & Co's Crixivan (indinavir) or Abbott Laboratories' Norvir (ritonavir), plus either one or two other antiretroviral drugs.