Antiretroviral Therapy

Immediate antiretroviral therapy (ART) refers to starting HIV treatment as soon as possible after the diagnosis of HIV infection, preferably on the first clinic visit (and even on the same day the HIV diagnosis is made). This strategy also is known as "rapid ART," "same-day ART," and "treatment...

PARTNER1, whose results were reported last year,(1) was one of the studies that supported current efforts to promote the growing scientific consensus supporting "Treatment as Prevention" (TasP) or Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U).

PARTNER1 evaluated HIV transmission risk in a European...

On May 18, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization announced that cases of neural tube defects have been reported in babies of women with HIV who were on treatment with dolutegravir at the time of conception and during early pregnancy. The...

Bictegravir (BIC), a new integrase inhibitor, was recently approved by the FDA for use in a single-pill coformulation with TAF/FTC (brand name: Biktarvy) as initial therapy and as a switch regimen for patients who are already on a suppressive ART regimen and who have no history of...

In September 2017, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially recognized that suppressing HIV through antiretroviral therapy (ART) prevents sexual transmission of HIV. In a "Dear Colleague" letter, CDC officials said, "people who take ART daily as prescribed and...

The EMERALD Study is a Phase 3 randomized (2:1), open-label, noninferiority study examining the strategy of switching patients with suppressed HIV RNA on a regimen consisting of a boosted protease inhibitor plus tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF)/emtricitabine to an investigational single-...

Highlights from Laura W. Cheever, MD, ScM, HRSA HIV/AIDS Bureau Associate Administrator and Conference Co-Chair

The field of HIV/AIDS care and treatment continues to evolve rapidly. Groundbreaking developments in HIV research are regularly presented at international meetings and...

This publication presents the results of San Francisco General Hospital's Ward 86 pilot study of immediate ART initiation. This RAPID program systematically offered ART to patients upon diagnosis of HIV; patients were referred from HIV testing sites in San Francisco. Of the 39 patients who...

We know that very early treatment in acute HIV infection decreases HIV RNA; this study shows it also greatly decreases proviral DNA (and reservoir size). Researchers investigated 2 small cohorts of patients in Thailand with acute (and very early) HIV infection, 1 untreated and 1 treated with ART...

Researchers at the 2016 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections presented results from a randomized double-blind, double-dummy switch study of TAF/FTC. Over 660 patients with virologic suppression on TDF/FTC-containing 3-drug regimens were either switched to TAF/FTC (200/10 mg...

The prevailing opinion among experts regarding the optimal CD4 T-cell count at which to start patients on antiretroviral therapy (ART) has shifted several times during the evolution of HIV treatment. These shifts reflect attempts to strike a balance between preventing HIV-associated illness and...