cabotegravir-LA (PrEP)
27 October 2025. Related: ARVs, Integrase inhibitors, PrEP.
Cabotegravir-LA (CAB-LA) is a long acting injection given by intramuscular injections every two months.
cab-o-TEG-ra-veer
Cabotegravir LA is an integrase inhibitor that can be used as HIV treatment or HIV PrEP.
CAB-LA was approved for use as PrEP in the US in 2021, in Europe in 2023 and in the UK in 2024. The NHS approved CAB-LA as PrEP in 2025.
- Currently, this version of PrEP is only available to a limited number of people in the UK.
- Oral tablets are sometimes used for both drugs for the first month of treatment. This is to make sure you can tolerate the active drugs. Sometimes people start with injection though, without the oral pills first,
- Injections need to be given by a health professional.
- The first injections are given either every month or every two months.
- Injections are only given every two months.
- The injections can be given with or without food.
- Missing an injections might need restarting with oral dosing. This depends on the time missed. Oral versions should be provided in case there is a short unplanned delay.
- These long-acting drugs can take more than a year to leave your body. If for any reason you need to stop CAB- LA, it is important to talk to your doctor about future risks and care. This is because of small concern that any risk of HIV might include drug resistance to cabotegravir.
- Most people reported skin reactions from where the drug was injected. These very usually mild or moderate. Most people in research studies did not stop treatment because of these reactions but about 1 in 100 (1%) did.
- Other very common or common side effects include headache, tiredness, dizziness and fever. These occurred in more than 1 in 10 people.
- Drug interactions include with: carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, phenobarbital, phenytoin (medicines for epilepsy); rifabutin, rifampicin, rifapentine (antibiotics); systemic dexamethasone (a steroid anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant medicine), except when used as a single dose treatment; St John’s wort (a herbal antidepressant).
- Drug interactions. Please tell your doctor or pharmacist about any other drugs or supplements before taking them with CAB/RPV-LA. Drug interactions can also be checked using the online checker at Liverpool University HIV Interaction website:
https://www.hiv-druginteractions.org/checker - In general, CAB-LA is not recommended during pregnancy. This is because there is limited data, but some women have become pregnancy on CAB-LA. These pregnancies will be carefully following in a safety registry. Although no safety signals have been reported, this usually takes several years to collect data. Your doctor is likely to suggest different PrEP to use during pregnancy if there are oral meds that you are able to use.
- Early results from using CAB-LA as PrEP (to prevent HIV infection) did not report any complications in about 350 women during pregnancy. However, drug levels in HIV positive women still need to be studied in more detail.
- CAB-LA PrEP is marketed by ViiV Healthcare as Apretude.
Further information
The European patient information and detailed Product Information for maraviroc are available from these links on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) website.
The Patient Information is a simplified summary: what the drug is, why it is used, results from studies and cautions including side effects.
The Product Information is a detailed technical summary that you can access as a PDF file by clicking the ‘Product Information’ tab. It describes more precisely how the drug works and how it is processed by your body. This includes, for example, reported food interaction studies in terms of calories or fat content. It includes more details of the study results and a full list of side effects and drug interactions.