Simon Collins, HIV i-Base<\/p>\n
In Volume 11, issue 5 of Antiviral Therapy, Ana Canestri and colleagues reported the results of using foscarnet as additional therapy in 11 multi-drug resistant French patients with late stage HIV disease, failing their current treatment.<\/strong><\/p>\n Inclusion criteria for this open-label, single-arm, add-on pilot study, included viral load >50,000 copies\/mL and CD4 counts <100\/mm3<\/sup>, and documented three-class resistance. Foscarnet induction therapy consisted of 5 g intravenously twice daily for 6 weeks, in addition to their antiretroviral combination, and the primary endpoint was virological response at week 6. Patients with at least 1 log decrease in viral load at week 6 (W6), were given foscarnet 5 g intravenously twice daily on two consecutive days each week.<\/p>\n Median baseline CD4 and viral load were 10 cells\/mm3<\/sup> and at 5.16 log copies\/mL respectively, with a median of 9 (RTI), 2 (NNRTI) and 12 (PI) associated mutations.<\/p>\n In an intent-to-treat analysis, the median change in viral load was almost -2.0 logs at week 2 and -1.79 logs at week 6. 8\/11 patients had at least 1 log reduction at week 6. One patient discontinued foscarnet at week 2 because of renal toxicity.<\/p>\n Six patients started maintenance therapy. Change from baseline after 12 weeks of maintenance therapy was -0.85 log in the four patients who reached W12, and the median increase of CD4+ T-cell count was 60 cells\/mm3<\/sup>.<\/p>\n The study noted that \u0091foscarnet markedly reduced plasma HIV load and improved immunological status\u0092. Given the toxicity associated with foscarnet, and the difficulty of administration (twice-daily IV administration, often requiring a Port-a-Cath or Hickman line for anything treatment lasting longer than a few days) this is clearly a treatment of last resor<\/strong>t.<\/p>\n It may nevertheless be suitable for a limited number of patients, particularly part of a short-term strategy to maximize virological response, and particlular if they also have active CMV<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Reference:<\/p>\n Canestri A, Ghosn J, Wirden M et al. Foscarnet as salvage therapy for patients with late-stage HIV disease and multiple drug resistance. Antiviral Therapy 2006; 11: 561-566. (Volume11, Issue 5)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Simon Collins, HIV i-Base In Volume 11, issue 5 of Antiviral Therapy, Ana Canestri and colleagues reported the results of using foscarnet as additional therapy in 11 multi-drug resistant French patients with late stage HIV disease, failing their current treatment. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antiretrovirals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Comment<\/h3>\n