Introduction
This guide includes information about the most important aspects of HIV treatment.
It is written and reviewed by HIV positive people and health professionals.
If HIV is new to you, many of the issues relating to treatment can be scary. This booklet should help you feel more in control of this aspect of your health care.
We update this guide every 12-18 months because information about HIV can change quickly. This is the 15th edition.
Information is based on the most recent draft UK guidelines (March 2012). These include significant changes from the previous guidelines.
When appropriate we have also used European and US guidelines.
All guidelines stress that HIV treatment should be individualised.
This guide is to help in discussions with your doctor. Make sure any information you read is up to date.
Be cautious of information, whether printed or from the Internet, that does not have a recent date.
If you are reading this after July 2013, please call i-Base for a new edition.
Main changes to this edition include:
- New recommendations for first choice of meds and alternatives.
- A new section on access to meds if you are not treated according to the guidelines.
- Recently approved new drugs and formulations. These include nevirapine-PR (prolonged release), etravirine 200 mg, rilpivirine and Eviplera. Nelfinavir and indinavir are no longer included in the ARV chart and paediatric doses for efavirenz and lopinavir/r have been added.
- That all newly diagnosed people in the UK are tested to see if the infection may be recent.
- New links to online risk calculators for heart disease and diabetes.
- Why treatment does not always work and drug resistance.
- Use of abacavir in first-line therapy.
- The more common use of atazanavir and darunavir rather than Kaletra when PI-based combinations are used.
- A new section on the use of the integrase inhibitor raltegravir.
- Updated information on non-standard combinations, including maraviroc, etravirine and rilpivirine (p. 36).